What's your opinion on spending $50 on your kids education?

liudr:
I wish to go to high schools to demonstrate to those kids what science and engineering is about and there are very interesting topics but to make an impression to girls around age 12-15 I need girl presenters. I was presenting at a women engineering on campus event for that age range girls but after almost a full day of presenting, only less than 10 showed up. The campus organizers didn't do their work and I consider it was wasting my time to present three sessions to an average of 3 girls each session for 1 hours each.

Hell, I'm a guy. How should I blame them for only sending out registration forms to high schools? They should personally go the the high schools, show pictures of the past event and encourage more girls to come. You can't magically convert a bunch of girls from loving what society tells them to do as young girls into liking science-engineering subjects.

That s*cks, especially at an engineering event !
I... guess the overload of work in education is to blame a lot. I've seen quite a number of things fail, even pretty basic ones as keeping safety in mind at school because of the amounts of work. I for example was often the only one (of three) with safety papers while we should have 14 on a school with 350 kids.
I'll spare you the excuses I've heard from teachers while talking to them about safety. If there were times I wanted to blame people/things, I'd pick those... ]:slight_smile:

I hope you keep in mind, even with a group that small, that you may have planted a seed, whether they become die-hard "arduino-addicts" or do something completely different with it.

robtillaart:
Basically you describe a fictive customer in as much detail as possible and that person is the archetype for your whole customergroup. We often used 2-6 in projects, archetype per role.

A minimal persona: archetype Girl, 13 year - Linda, has one older brother Jason...... [Got a picture?]

How can we seduce Linda for technique? What would she like to have to make her live happier?

Ok from the persona profile I can think of the following product concepts (that might include Arduino tech)

  • A detection system that shows that her sister Kate was in her room. Actually it shows if anyone was in her room. Better if someone is now in my room !
  • RFID tags in make-up to end discussion about "that is my lipstick Kate",
  • A detection system that warns when Jason is around,
  • A handbag she will never forget,
  • A something thingy to share secret messages with her friends,
  • A diary that only she can open ("Mom, that stupid Kate got my diary!!!")
  • ...
    (think you allready have ideas how to make these)

I hadn't thought of it that way, I probably would be the worst guy promoting stuff, but I think it has a lot of potential !

As Liudr pointed out a Female instructor would probably make it lots easier, another thing would be to find a complete line of teaching material from simple to intermediate. Once they know the basics and have successfully built intermediate stuff I guess boys&girls will realise they can build stuff completely by them selves.

mowcius:
All interesting ideas here.

female -> lillypad -> Leds on clothing

I personally think this is a poor idea that people seem to have.

Yep, I even felt pretty small-minded when I wrote it down.
I taught my neighbour how to operate a sowing-machine while she... has taught me how to weld by the way, but at the time of writing I didn't have a clue where to find ideas.

mowcius:
Girls of a young(ish) age (as said above) I can see being much more interested 'secret stuff', things that tell them something, hide something etc. As for specific projects, that's a hard one.

I started this:
http://collabedit.com/7cr9k
Feel free to change stuff around - lets see what people come up with. Stick your name in top right.

Great !

A relative simple one we probably all know here could be the RGB-moodlight. Even without secrecy- gadgets it's quite magical.
Another would be a secret doorbell, but too much secret stuff might also be too much.