This year, Ada Lovelace Day will be held on Tuesday 16 October.
Ada Lovelace Day is about sharing stories of women — whether engineers, scientists, technologists or mathematicians — who have inspired you to become who you are today. The aim is to create new role models for girls and women in these male-dominated fields by raising the profile of other women in STEM.
AdaFruit, the woman-founded open hardware company, is partnering with the Ada Initiative to offer Ada Initiative donors a 10% discount on your entire order from AdaFruit.
Just a few of the many kits and badges you can get from AdaFruit:
If you’ve been wanting to get into open hardware, this is a great way to start. AdaFruit’s goal is to help people learn electronics and hardware, not just sell toys. With Limor “LadyAda” Fried at the helm, AdaFruit recognizes that women and girls love building DIY electronic projects and understanding how hardware works.
Donate at least $32 to the Ada Initiative in the next 24 hours (until October 2, 2012, 19:00 UTC/noon Pacific US time) and we’ll send you the discount code via email.
We kick off our LinuxCon Europe Q&A series today with keynote speaker and openMaterials Co-founderCatarina Mota. Mota shares some really interesting insights with us on open hardware, her favorite projects and how open hardware compares to open source software. I’m really looking forward to hearing her speak at LinuxCon Europe in Barclenoa November 5-7, 2012.
Ada Lovelace is widely held to be the world’s first computer programmer. That she was Lord Byron’s daughter and a wow at parties trails in the dust in comparison. She is the face of Ada Lovelace Day, set up by Suw Charman-Anderson to promote women in tech (and, increasingly, all the other sciences). Anyone can celebrate 16 October 2012 by blogging about a notable woman in science, attending spectacular events set up by the ALA organisation and supporting the fundraiser. After talking to the wonderful Suw Charman-Anderson, who in seeking to inspire others has inspired so many, we kind of want to blog about her.
However, when Dr. Denise Sekaquaptewa and I put “glamorous” STEM role models to the test, the results were not promising. In our study, middle school girls received one of four packets containing interviews and photos of three college women. One quarter of the girls saw feminine STEM role models: women wearing pastel-colored clothes and make-up, described as successful in math or science and fond of fashion magazines. The rest of the girls saw role models with some combination of these features: women who were good at STEM, but not particularly feminine (wearing plainer clothes, simply enjoying reading); feminine women who were smart, but not explicitly in STEM; or not-so-girly women succeeding in non-STEM fields.
Join Helen Arney, Dr Suzie Sheehy, Gia Milinovich, Dr Helen Scales, Helen Keen, Dr Alice Bell, Sarah Angliss and Sydney Padua for an entertaining evening of science, technology, comedy and song on Ada Lovelace Day. Featuring all manner of wonders, from marine biology and particle physics to the secrets of fridges and performance robots, Ada Lovelace Day Live! is an event not to be missed!
When it comes to graphic novels, girls often get pushed to the side as the attention goes to male-centric superheroes and the appeal of graphic novels for reluctant male readers. In the past, this could be rationalized by the predominant number of male authors writing for a male audience.
Unfortunately, focus on only the hero in graphic novels ignores the rise of the strong female protagonist, and of an increasing number of talented female authors and artists.
If we take the time to look, we find there are many options to appeal to graphic novel readers of all genders, ages, and interests.
This website is dedicated to the activities of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Chair for Women in Science and Engineering (Atlantic Region). Dr. Tamara Franz-Odendaal, Associate Professor in Biology at Mount Saint Vincent University, is the NSERC Atlantic Chair for 2011-2015. The NSERC awards five chair holders across Canada for a five year term.
The primary goal of WISE Atlantic is to encourage young women to consider careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and to consider themselves as valuable potential contributors to these fields.
Blog dedicated to women from science history. I’m just a nerdy science chick who decided to make a blog dedicated to women scientists from history. I wanted to learn more about these women and show that despite being excluded from science throughout much of history, many women still made important contributions to science.
Sally Ride, the first American woman to fly in space, died on Monday at her home in San Diego. She was 61.
Dr. Ride, a physicist who was accepted into the space program in 1978 after she answered a newspaper ad for astronauts, flew on the shuttle Challenger on June 18, 1983, and on a second mission in 1984. At 32, she was also the youngest American in space.
She later became the only person to sit on both panels investigating the catastrophic shuttle accidents that killed all astronauts on board — the Challenger explosion in 1986 and the Columbia crash in 2003.
Dr. Ride was finishing studies at Stanford University — she had degrees in physics and astrophysics (and also English) — and looking for a job when she saw NASA’s advertisement. She looked at the qualifications and said, “I’m one of those people,” she told The New York Times in 1982.
Limor Fried is an MIT graduate and engineer and the head of Adafruit Industries. Her goal is to empower a growing subculture of “makers” (do-it-yourself technology hackers and builders) with products and resources to facilitate their projects. Fried has been featured in The New York Times, Businessweek, Forbes and even graced the cover of Wired Magazine. Currently, she is turning her attention to the LEGO controversy and offering a solution to girls who were not satisfied by LEGO’s latest attempt to appeal to a young female audience. Rather than the puppies and beauty salons presented by LEGO’s Friends line, Fried has envisioned and brought to life a miniature version of the kind of workshop she herself works in. In the following interview she discusses the responses she’s gotten to her product, the future of girls in STEM fields, and what you can do to support her project.
AdaCamp is a Ada Initiative event focused on increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture. AdaCamp brings together people to build community, discuss issues women have in common across open technology and culture fields, and find ways to address them. Open technology and culture includes open source software, Wikipedia and other wiki projects, open data, open government, fan/remix culture, open libraries, and more. Attendance is by invitation and attendees are selected from qualified applicants through an open invitation process. Attendance is open to people of all genders. The first AdaCamp was AdaCamp Melbourne, in January 2012.
Above are the 200 Ada Lovelace stickers we’re sending for campers later this month. All campers will also receive a discount coupon to the Adafruit store.
Why should adults get to have all the fun when it comes to learning to code? Tons of new resources are available to get kids started down the path toward becoming web crafters and coders. We’ve gathered our favorites just for you.
The goal of these sites isn’t really to teach kids how to code; but, rather, to teach them critical thinking, math skills, problem solving, creativity and perseverance. These are the tools you need to be a programmer!
Most of the sites below teach programming using a visual programming environment—which simply means that kids are using graphics, rather than text, to build their programs and manipulate code. This makes programming more accessible and fun for kids (and adults!).
In this insightful interview, Neri Oxman,architect, designer and professor of Media Arts and Sciences and Director of the Mediated Matter group at the MIT Media Lab, explains the differences between ‘additive’ and ‘subtractive’ manufacturing. Inspired by things that ‘grow’ in nature, Oxman uses the world’s most advanced 3D printing technology – the Objet Connex500 multi-material 3D printer to produce some incredible models which will be on display at the Pompidou Center until August 6th 2012 at the ‘Multiversites Creatives’ exhibit. Neri also explains 3D printing within the wider paradigm shift in technology and manufacturing – comparing it to the Gutenberg 2D print revolution of the 1440′s.
Printable catalog (PDF)
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