NCWIT Aspirations in Computing

We are in one of the most exciting times of year in K-12 education because hundreds or even thousands of girls across the country will spend hours working on their applications for state and national level recognition by the National Center for Women and Information Technology. Why is this important and why am I so excited?

NCWIT is a national organization which is empowered to support, encourage, and recognize females at the high school level who are making Computer Science and technology a part of their academic career in high school, possibly even at the college level, and better yet in the business world.

Schools and districts across the country are looking at Computer Science as a vital subject as valuable as math, language, and science. Funding promotion, and investment from the government is really starting to happen. Private and public organizations like Google, Code, and Microsoft are putting their networks and resources behind the movement. This is great in so many ways, but especially because more people with different backgrounds,different genders, different cultures, different interests will start to be part of this awesome world of technology. For decades, those voices were not part of the landscape.

What we need is not necessarily more Computer Scientists, but more people who understand and can think like Computer Scientists—and are able to create with technology, not just use it. We need more people who love biology to also know how to write software. We need people who want to start their own company to also know how to design a website to promote their business. We need more people in research labs to also know how to write their own mobile apps to analyze their data. We need more people in politics to understand big data. We need more people in philanthropy to know how to troubleshoot their organization network. We need more environmentalists to know how to buy and program their own sensors to read data. And our students in school right now are those leaders in the very near future. That is why this is so important RIGHT NOW!

In order to do this, the world of technology has to do a better job of being attractive to a wider variety of people. One way we do that is have classes which are not dominated by one single type of person. We need classrooms with students of all races, all religions, all interests, all talents, all ethnicities, and yes….. all genders.

Encourage the females in your high schools to consider applying today.