The Harvey Girls – How the West was Won with a Restaurant Chain

An idea … Fred Harvey and the Empire he built. He saw a Need and implemented the idea. If could do it well could change things.  One of America’s first female labor forces, ahead of its time.  Hired female architect. Academy Award winning song (who will win tonight?).  Celebration Harvey Heads.  Do you have celebration ideas?

Rosie the Riveter Memorial Rose Garden

An idea … I went to Portland to work on the computer science / computational thinking standards with ISTE.  While there I went to the International Rose Garden and walked in on the Rosie Riveter Rose Garden celebration.  Now I am collaborating with the Hermann Park Conservancy to plant Rosie Roses in their Rose Garden to build histories in Houston.  And inspire the next generation of Rosies.

 

Code Girls: The True Story of the American Women Who
Secretly Broke Codes in World War II

Robots throughout History – We need innovative Rosies to create our future inventions.  “We may think of robots as inventions of the future, but the reality is that robotics has been around since ancient times. In fact, humans have been exploring the idea of using robots to make our lives easier or more enjoyable for centuries.”

If you could have three wishes what would they be?

Mine … Find Rosies in Houston and create an oral History.
Need leaders like 11 year old Ruby to make this happen. That and curiosity.

Those Rosies can be found in NCWIT Aspirations.org communities.

Still not convinced of the importance?  Watch the 60 minutes special on teaching girls K-12 with Hadi Partovi. Any girl who applies for the aspirations.org award can apply for an AspireIT grant of $3000. Want CS taught in your elementary school. Provide the time and recruit and mentor an aspirations girl to run it.  And provide opportunities for high school and college students to be the teachers like Code Ninjas is doing.  They get IT.

Want to learn more about the politics of CS Education?  See my 20 year history and continuing efforts to convince schools and districts to make computer science and computational thinking a priority of testing prep.