Educating Girls
About FOSS, With FOSS

Katie Miller
@codemiller

Overview

The problem
The opportunity
The approach
Workshop take 1
Workshop take 2
Tips and recommendations

The Problem

Women make up as little as 2 per cent of the open source community
Surveys indicate less than 20 per cent of Australian computer science graduates are female
Less than 25 per cent of the Australian IT workforce is female
Only 9 per cent of US CIOs are women and that figure has been falling
Just 15 per cent of ASX 200 board members are women

The Opportunity

IBM EXITE (EXploring Interests in Technology & Engineering) Camps started in 2001
The annual camps, held over three days, help fuel interest in science, maths and technology
The target audience is high-school girls aged from 13 to 16
Three camps were held in Queensland last year
Camps mostly consist of workshops, of about one hour each

The Approach

My workshop: Open Source in the Cloud
Using Red Hat's PaaS, OpenShift, to create and customise a WordPress site
Topic areas: open source software, cloud computing, blogging, using the terminal, Linux, passwords, encryption, programming, version control systems
Web-based workshop instructions, also using WordPress
Wanted to run workshop on open source OS; lab machines had Ubuntu

Workshop Take 1

Five sections, each with instructions, a topic write-up and quiz
First section required setting up an OpenShift account
Used Login Configurator and WP Survey and Quiz Tool WordPress plugins to necessitate sequential section navigation

What Went Well

The girls enjoyed experimenting and many showed great creativity
All students had their first exposure to Linux; some really liked it
The prizes/free stuff went down a treat
Web-based instructions could be revisted afterwards; some girls did
Helpers rock; many hands make light work

Lessons Learnt

Don't try to include too much content
Teens won't read chunks of text; more images and pictorial navigation required
Linux and switching tabs/windows isn't intuitive; tips needed
Students will follow whatever prompts they see, whether or not they are official instructions
Not everyone is creative so include example values for everything

Workshop Take 2

Three sections, each with instructions and screenshots, a slideshow and a quiz
OpenShift accounts set up for students in advance
Used Open Clip Art Library and Inkscape for cartoons and other images, DZSlides for HTML5 slideshows and ThumbSniper plugin for screenshots on hover

What Went Well

Many girls finished and almost all were close to it
Students were asking questions to better understand the material
Girls went beyond instructions and did extra customisations
Web survey gave invaluable feedback

Survey Feedback

Had you heard of open source before the workshop? Yes: 18% / No: 82%
Had you heard of Linux before the workshop? Yes: 45% / No: 55%
Had you ever used Linux before the workshop? Yes: 0% / No: 100%
How likely is it you will download Linux now that you have learnt about it?
Very likely: 0% / Likely: 73% / Unlikely: 18% / No chance: 9%
Would you be interested in a coding workshop? Yes: 91% / No: 9%

Survey Comments

"Learning about different everything in the terminal was interesting."
"I liked that there was something new to learn...There was also competitiveness that encourages everyone."
"It seemed as though I was very knowledgable, even though I didn’t really know what I was doing."
"We got to use terminal, which I think is really fun??? idk I think it’s mostly just the feeling of being a COMPUTER HACKER hahahahh"

Lessons Learnt

There's a delicate balance between minimising content and including enough to be informative
Make everything as foolproof as possible
Students will probably always have issues that you didn't anticipate, so be prepared to deal with them

Tips and Recommendations

Communicate information through images as much as possible
Make the content interactive and allow for creativity
Do a dry run with someone from your target audience; it's easy to skip over steps that seem obvious to you
Make it fun and consider making it competitive; make sure students are motivated to move forward
Expect the unexpected and have plenty of folks on hand to answer questions

Links

Credits

Workshop Photos: Dayle Parker and David Ryan
Workshop Volunteers: Brian Moss, Julie Wu, Charmaine Bernal, Dayle Parker and David Ryan

Questions?