As technological and electronics artifacts integrate ever more tightly in our lives, it is disquieting to note that engineering enrollment continue to drop throughout the US. Even more alarming is that women participate in dismally low number in fields such as computer science and engineering, whereas virtually all science and business fields show significant improvement in terms of female participation.
One popular movement to stem the current tide evolves out of recognition that the pipeline is both the source of today’s trends and the strategic place of leveraging real change; improve the technology literacy of students at the primary and secondary level.
Robotic has served as a popular vehicle fir such pipeline-based technology literacy programs because of its ability to attract and inspire the imagination of students who are often unmotivated by conventional classroom curricula. There is no doubt that some of the students have found the contest-driven problem solving experience to be transformative. However these existing pipeline-focused technology literacy programs share a number of features that may limit participant diversity: they are short term, high intensity, competition driven, and technology focused.
Ny technological fluency, it means the ability to manipulate technology creatively and for one’s own use. We believe that the focus on fluency-building activities, which encourage creativity and personal adaptation of technology, will engage a more diverse student population with technology and engineering.
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