Engaging Girls In Engineering

During excursion time, a new program encouraging female students to participate in robotics has emerged.  By the time middle school comes around, many female students can be moved away from robotics and engineering because they are unaware of the creativity and innovation that is involved.  Often times, when we speak about engineering we talk in terms of math and science, but we forget about the other aspects, creativity, innovation.  To give girls a safe place to be themselves and utilize their math, science, creativity and innovation skills, a girls robotics class was created for excursion days.  Female students are working on creating a robot that emulates the characteristics of an animal.  Some students are using directions, while others are building from their knowledge of what an animal looks like.  On the February early release day, the girls will be programming their robots to perform a task, and in March, they will be showing off their robots and programs to a female engineer.  This program was funded by grant money provided by the A+ teacher grant for 2013-2014.