Girls4Tech is an initiative by Mastercard to both engage their employees as role models and mentors whilst showing middle school girls that it takes all kinds of interests and skills to pursue a career in STEM. Mastercard has launched this program in a number of countries over the last 3 years with the QLD launch being at Oakleigh State School with our Yrs 4-6 students. Following on from our QLD Women’s Week focus on STEM and our recognition as a community of the need to encourage girls in this area – this was an excellent opportunity for our school to continue working towards changing mindsets.
“With a declining number of young women going into STEM careers, it’s important for MasterCard to help make a difference in this space and work to develop a strong pipeline of talent for the technology jobs of the future. We need to have a voice in the products and services we are developing,” said Susan Warner, Vice President, Worldwide Communications.
It was an impressive program, obviously well designed and based on global maths and science concepts with a line of inquiry embedded into each of the activities. Enthusiastic mentors were placed at each of the stations and assisted the teams of girls to make sense of the challenge and then motivated them to be engaged in working towards solutions.
The themes were Digital Convergence, Algorithms and Cryptology with these three stations repeated so that this many girls could rotate to each of the three areas, moving as groups.
Cryptology was a popular activity with the girls having to work out how to read some messages using two different types of decrypting. They used codes and other forms of cryptography famous from historical periods such as WWII such as a scytale, to work out messages and to read them in different forms. This was challenging and required of the girls to take risks, to try things out and then to realise the value of this kind of thinking.
The Digital Convergence station prompted all sorts of discussion about a range of technologies from the past and their related purposes at the time and then discussions on how multiple forms of technology have converged into a single device – the smart phone. Many of these girls then got to try out facial recognition software which allowed payments with a blink of your eyes.
The Algorithms activity was based around the idea that efficiency is key when designing a course of action – these girls had lots of fun with the task which was to organise and count a container full of coloured balls but to design a course of action (algorithm) which was much more efficient each time. They were timed when they tested each of their solutions.
The activities all finished with a reflection about the activities and some discussion about whether their initial assessment of their abilities in Maths and Science areas had elevated. It was great to see, from expressions on faces and and an increased number of hands in the air, that this had indeed changed.
There were many valuable aspects to this day which were separate to the actual formal activities. There was incredible value for our students having contact with a company such as Mastercard which is diverse in its needs, roles and employees. There were software engineers but also project managers, office managers, staff who researched consumer needs and interpreted that to the designers, designers and those working with community engagement. There was a good mix of females and males, including some female coders. They were friendly, keen to help and motivate and open to discussion about what they did and their career paths. They were also very open to talking about the need to bring diversity to workplaces such as theirs.
It was also interesting to see the difference in some girls’ confidence levels by the end of the program in terms of their belief in their own abilities in Science and Maths. In Yr 6, for example, from one hand in the air to express confidence in their Science ability at the beginning – this was changed to over half the group having their hands in the air by the end of the session. Dealing explicitly I think with this self-awareness in our girls is a key step towards contributing to change. Additionally, treating STEM as a wonderful opportunity to engage all our students in inquiry, problem solving and taking risks is also important.
This activity is also further testament to our recognition as a school that our links to our community and to industry are crucial if we are to future-proof our students. In working towards our vision, we fully acknowledge that welcoming opportunities such as the Girls4Tech initiative into our school is essential if we are to be genuine in this journey.
Thanks Mastercard and Emily Biswell for such a great opportunity.
