Computer Grrrlz

By Kari -

“A Virtual Room of One’s Own” was pretty interesting, it had never occurred to me that almost all activities associated with girls were in the home. As a girl I did play outside a lot but I spent a lot of time in the home, baking, reading, talking on the phone, going online, watching TV, painting my nails, ect. I would agree that personal homepages do reflect a girls room. I volunteered for Perverted Justice which is an anti-pedophile association, and a lot of what I did involved myspace and creating a “girl’s” myspace. We of course kept all person and specific information out and pedophiles were still attracted to their web sites. Looking at real young girl’s web pages was almost scary, it was obvious of their age, they sometimes listed their school or the mall they liked to hang out in. It was pretty representative to the reading, bright colors, pictures of their favorite pop stars, animals, neo pets, and comments like the guestbook function.

My little sister that I am mentoring told me about her website the first time I met her and she wrote down the link for me to check out. Her mom helped her create it and helped her write and upload everything she wanted to put on. It had a homepage that noted this was a place for friends to hang out. It had links to pictures which had cute animals, and funny pictures you find on the internet. She also has a section for videos which include the Jonas Brothers, High School Musical and Hannah Montana. Knowing a young girls on the internet made me realize how much stuff there is online for young girls. Some of the sites I think are great, but all the social networking and fan sites I can’t help but find inappropriate. Why do young girls need to spend so much time online? There are so many things going on in real life they are missing out on. Perhaps this is a reason for social problems, when you socialize online a lot its very different to socialize in real life.

I thought the article about Girls Club computer classes in Ghana was great. Teaching a good skill to girls who have trouble graduating was helping their leadership skills. I think it was important to teach them the skills as well as let them have fun, but without incorporating things they didn’t need. They magazine they all made together was great, it not only used their computer skills but it collaborated a group of women’s thoughts and ideas together. Taking them to see computers in the workplace was really cool too because it shows where this is applied in real life and can give them a goal to strive to. I’m also really impressed the author was a male and though apprehensive had the courage to start and run the girl’s club.

Braincake at first appeared to me as the same girls website, but I was really excited to see it was a math and science partnership for girls. I’ve never really seen a site like this, it had links to cool programs for girls with stuff to do that was all related to math or science. Its links were to scientific websites like bayer making science make sense. I really thought it was cool that have like a little scholarship for making your dreams happen by participating in a program you might not be able to afford. I think this site is a really good idea, it has the appearance of other sites girls like but information that has a lot more substance than how to make your hair look good.

I also thought engineer girl was a really cool site, I never even thought about engineering until I met my boyfriend who is majoring in civil. I went to a few of his classes with him over summer and I was kind of surprised to see male dominated classes, all of my classes are mostly female so I wasn’t used to this. I never saw a girl raise their hand or ask questions either. I realized I didn’t know much about engineering but there are soooooo many careers available I thought this should be something more girls are into. I think the large amounts of math and science may intimidate many girls. This site was all about why you would want to be an engineer and how to get on track to become one. If this is something I saw as a young girls I would have thought this was really cool and something I wanted to do.

Comments

۞ Lauren said…
I agree that girls need to spend less time on the internet. When online, I am bombarded with advertisements telling me I am too fat, not wearing the latest fashion, my hair color is wrong, and that I need this make-up to be pretty, ect. I danced for 8 years and then played soccer. I know my self-esteem was very high during these times, especially when we won against a team of boys. Playing outside, joining after school clubs, or playing sports are great ways for young girls to feel self-worth.
October 4, 2008 at 12:33 PM
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