With technology being such a booming and prevalent industry, it does seem a bit odd that, in general, it’s failed to reach such an important demographic: Girls.
As females make a large impact in colleges and in the workforce (more than 40 percent of women are their family’s breadwinner), they have been unable to make their break in the computer science industry. Which is why companies like Google and other nonprofits are looking to reverse that trend.
Computer science is one of the fastest growing fields with job projection numbers poised to reach 4.2 million by 2020, yet less than 1 percent of high school girls are interested in it. Additionally, the number of women in the computer science industry dropped from 37 percent in 1980s to 18 percent now. Furthermore, only 7 percent of venture capitalist deals go to female founders and CEOs, and only 20 percent of the 300,000 students in AP computer science classes are girls.
Which is why Google is now stepping in and launching its “Made with Code” campaign targeting girls. The first component is a video featuring girls meeting President Obama. In the background, a voice says: “You are a girl who understands bits exist to be assembled. When you learn to code, you can assemble anything that you see missing. And in so doing, you will fix something, or change something, or invent something, or run something, and maybe that’s how you will play your bit in this world.”
An interactive website is next. Featured on the site are bios of female role models who write software that designs fabrics or choreographs dances. The site also has entertaining coding lessons and a directory of coding programs — all aimed at young women.
Google is also offering $50 million in grants as well as partnering with nonprofits, such as Girls Who Code, a nonprofit that was started two years ago and organizes girls’ summer coding institutes.
Google’s initiative is a great first step, and hopefully with the support of additional groups, the numbers of female coders will grow.
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Watch: Our Q&A With FoodCorps, The Nutrition Movement Changing How American Kids Eat
Over the last few weeks NationSwell has been introducing you to a number of groundbreaking innovators who are making big bets to tackle even bigger national problems. The topics have ranged from education and national service to our recent installment featuring FoodCorps, an organization dedicated to teaching kids across 15 states how to grow and eat healthy food.
On June 24, NationSwell hosted its first ever live Google+ hangout to discuss these initiatives. NationSwell’s Special Projects Editor Cat Cheney, FoodCorps founder Curt Ellis, and FoodCorps service member Meghan McDermott elaborated on how specifically the organization is changing their communities for the better.
As Curt Ellis puts it, “There are 100,000 public schools in America. As we’ve learned in the first few years, changing a lunch line from serving french fries to fresh greens takes a great deal of work.” Not only that, but changing a child’s attitude toward food is not exactly a simple task either. To try to teach her students to have an open mind to foods they instinctively dismiss without trying, food service member Meghan McDermott’s motto in her classroom is ‘Don’t yuck my yum.’ “We try to teach kids to be respectful of other people’s eating habits and their likes and dislikes. We teach them that everyone’s tastebuds are different. They might like something now that they don’t like later, or they might not like something now that they might like prepared a different way.”
Watch the video above to learn more about the inner workings of FoodCorps and how you can get involved. To continue the conversation, share your thoughts with the hashtag #NSBigBets.
This Brave Group of Michigan Business Leaders Are Standing Up For LGBT Rights
Last year was a landmark year for the gay marriage movement, and now this year, supporters are turning the tide on rights in the workplace. Some 10 major Michigan businesses are spearheading a campaign to amend the state’s civil rights act to prohibit employee discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Currently, Michigan is one of 29 states that allows an employer to legally fire someone based on his or her sexual orientation; employee discrimination based on gender identity is also legal. But state business leaders from AT&T Michigan, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Consumers Energy, Dow Chemical Co., Google, Herman Miller, PADNOS, Steelcase, Strategic Staffing Solutions and Whirlpool Corporation are aiming to change that by forming the Michigan Competitive Workforce Coalition, according to MLive.com.
The state law outlawing employee discrimination — the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1976 (ELCRA) — extends only to religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, familial status, or marital status. Business leaders like AT&T Michigan’s Jim Murray, a Republican, believe that should include lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, too.
“We need to find ways in Michigan to keep and attract talent, and there are some barriers to that and this happens to be one of them,” Murray said.
Overwhelmingly, more than 75 percent of Michigan residents back the idea of adding sexual orientation to state law, which includes a majority of Republicans and small business owners, according to a recent poll. Meanwhile, the Michigan Department of Civil Rights released a report last year that found excluding LGBT protection hurts the state’s pool of talent as well as its economy. By refusing to update the law, the state loses competitive advantage in keeping some of its college graduates as well as professionals, too.
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While there’s no legislation on the table yet, the coalition has pledged to push lawmakers into a meaningful conversation about the amendment. Previous efforts, which include a proposed bill in the Senate in 2012 and in the House in 2009, failed to receive a floor vote. But late last year Republican Governor Rick Snyder said he’s open to to the idea.
“This is the right time to do it and the right thing to do, and I’m hoping that the Legislature can be brave enough to do it,” said Shelly Padnos, the executive vice president of coalition member PADNOS.
Padnos, who previously worked for the House of Republicans but now identifies as an Independent, points out that ELCRA was passed by a bipartisan group of Republicans and Democrats who understood that equality was important to Michigan’s economic future. Hopefully, that attitude continues to resonate with the legislature today.
How a Generous Gift From Google Is Helping Bay Area Teachers Soar
After the 2008 recession, cuts in educational spending left many teachers opening up their own wallets for basic school supplies like dry-erase markers and printer paper. In fact, a study found that 99.5 percent of teachers paid an average of $485 out of their own pockets last year (and we already know that our country’s teachers don’t make a lot of money).
But as Good News Network reports (via ABC 7), Google has alleviated this financial burden for 604 Bay Area teachers. How so? By forking out $600,000 to help these educators entirely fund special projects geared toward helping their students learn.
Some teachers hadn’t received money from their school district for new supplies for five years. After posting their requests on the website Donors Choose, Google stepped in with a donation that replaced the old stuff and dated material.
MORE: To Change Public Education, This Nonprofit Is Hacking the System
Oakland High School teacher Payton Carter received graphic novels to help his students get more interested in reading. “They want stuff that is interesting, where pictures tell the story, too,” he told the local TV station. “It can help them figure it out.”
Other gifts ranged from basic school supplies such as dividers, binders and white boards, to more technological gifts like iPads and even a remote-operated submersible for students to help build and study. Google’s gesture sounds like a wonderful way to help teachers the provide tools needed to help students succeed.
How Google Glass Can Fight Fires
For firefighters on the front lines, time is always of the essence. With that in mind, Patrick Jackson, a firefighter and self-taught programmer from Rocky Mount, N.C., has designed an application for Google Glass that can feed first-responders the information they need to quickly and effectively assess the scene of a fire or accident, without needing to use another device, such as a smartphone or radio. “I’ll hear a little notification and can look up into the top corner of my vision and see a map of where [the fire] is,” Jackson told CNN about his program. “I see the location of the incident and what type of call it is.”
The first iteration of Jackson’s app performs minor tasks, such as receiving dispatch messages, identifying nearby hydrants or mapping the location of incidents. But Jackson doesn’t plan on stopping there. He’s working on adding even more data in the near future, such as the ability to access buildings’ blueprints, contact info for owners and specs of vehicles. And while Google Glass isn’t yet compatible with firefighting gear, small tweaks to the design of oxygen masks and helmets could allow responders to record video and take pictures with the device, which could be an important tool for investigations.
MORE: Why Has Google Started Hoarding Robots?
Jackson, who studied computer science before transferring to the University of North Carolina, Asheville, to attend the environmental management and policy program, is also the creator of the popular Android app Firefighter Log, which similarly pushes key information about emergency incidents directly to smartphones. To get his hands on the highly coveted Google Glass, Jackson entered Google’s IfIHadGlass competition, then raised money for the app’s development through Indiegogo. After all that work, the app is getting noticed, and Jackson hopes it will be available within the next six months (before Google Glass is even released to the public) in order to help firefighters across the country save more lives.
MORE: Google Creates a Better Way to Help You Find Your Local Lawmakers
How Kitesurfing Sparked a Green Energy Revolution
Don Montague has always known there’s power in the wind. For much of the 1980s, he traveled the world, winning windsurfing World Cup races and thinking up new sail designs. In the 1990s, he turned his attention upward, designing kites to haul surfers across the water at speeds of 40 miles per hour and faster. His experiments helped pioneer the now wildly popular sport of kiteboarding.
In 2006, Montague was well into his latest project, trying to break the trans-Atlantic crossing record using a boat pulled by a giant kite, when his friends, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (avid kiteboarders both), proposed a different direction. “They said, ‘Hey, Don, we’re working on all these other projects to help save the world—maybe you should focus more on producing electricity than trying to pull boats,’ ” Montague explained over the phone.
MORE: Facebook to Ramp Up Wind Power Usage
Montague had been trying to get funding from his usual extreme-sport sponsors—Red Bull and sports companies. But now he had a new option, Google, which supplied him with $10 million. The federal government’s Advanced Research Project Agency chipped in another $3 million. Montague approached two kiteboarding scientists, Saul Griffith and Corwin Hardham, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and founded Makani Power, based in Alameda, Calif. Continue reading “How Kitesurfing Sparked a Green Energy Revolution”
Why Has Google Started Hoarding Robots?
This year, Google has acquired eight robotics companies. One of them is Boston Dynamics, the company best known for creating “creepy galloping robots” like the Big Dog and Wild Cat for the Defense Department. Another is Bot & Dolly, which makes robotic camera systems as seen in the movie “Gravity,” starring George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information to make it universally accessible and useful. So, how do these robots help them fulfill their mission? They hope to equip these robots with cameras and send them all over the world as part of the Google Maps initiative. They may even become a replacement for Google Street View cars.
Google Creates a Better Way to Help You Find Your Local Lawmakers
Google just rolled out a few upgrades to its Civic Information API that “lets developers connect constituents to their federal, state, county and municipal elected officials—right down to the city council district.” In a blog post, Google stated that its API has already allowed developers to create apps for U.S. elections, but few offer ways to find lawmakers at the local level. You can already see the features of the new API in action via partner websites such as Change.org and Popvox. As with any open data project, the process is ongoing and open for testing and feedback. If you’d like to help test or weigh on on the new features, visit Google’s Developer Forum.
Source: Google Developers
Farm-Fresh Food Delivered to Your Doorstep Without the Middleman? It Can Be Done. Here’s How.
If you want fresh fish, you drive to the docks. Fresh vegetables, the farmer’s market. But what if it came to you, hours after being plucked from the ground, hauled out of the water or coaxed out of an oven? What if you could buy all the food you eat from local, sustainable growers and ranchers and fishermen, all year round, every day, without having to traipse from place to place?
If the San Francisco startup Good Eggs continues its impressive run, that’ll soon be possible in cities all over America. Bay Area residents—as well as folks in Brooklyn, N.Y., New Orleans and Los Angeles—can now order and eat enough local food at www.goodeggs.com to avoid supermarkets altogether. Continue reading “Farm-Fresh Food Delivered to Your Doorstep Without the Middleman? It Can Be Done. Here’s How.”