Next week, the P & C of Oakleigh State School have coordinated a ‘Week of Empowerment and Inspiration’ for our community to celebrate QLD Women’s Week.
This interesting infographic from the Office of the Chief Scientist presents a vivid story of Women in STEM in Australia and why discussion and celebration of women in leadership and in STEM fields is so important. Having the discussion with our young girls, continuing the discussion, exposing them to role models, encouraging them to BE role models and widening their views of future pathways for them is so important.
It’s also the reason that Dr Catherine Ball, along with her colleagues Dr Karen Joyce and Paul Mead started ‘SheFlies’, a venture designed to build high quality STEM leadership and learning opportunities through drone education.
As quoted from the latest ‘SheFlies’ newsletter, the
‘new drone economy’ is estimated to be worth tens to hundreds of billions of dollars by 2020, and estimated to provide about 10% of future jobs..
The problem however, is that
women and girls are largely missing from this important emerging sector (<1% female pilots). This may be due to many reasons, including: lack of opportunities in rural and regional areas; high entry barrier (cost); public perception of drones as a hobbyist activity rather than revenue, employment or entrepreneurial opportunity; and lack of positive female role models in the media (both traditional and social media).
Catherine Ball recently returned from Northern QLD where SheFlies worked with James Cook University, to facilitate their Drone Camps to classes of secondary students:
The 2017 Drone Congress is also being planned for Brisbane. Catherine presented at the QLD Principal’s Conference yesterday and will also be at the QLD Middle Leaders Conference on the weekend.
At Oakleigh State School, on Monday, we are lucky enough to be hosting Dr Catherine for a ‘Day of Drones’ – a whole day of Catherine working with year levels, presenting an Assembly, talking to our teachers and our girls and parents about future career pathways.
We are so excited about the week which starts with Dr Catherine Ball but then continues with many other opportunities to evolve our students’ thinking about many important areas.
