Who creates technology and what difference does it make?
Posted by Jie Chao on November 8th, 2007
Hi, everyone
We had a great talk today with Dr. Cohoon.
Dr. Cohoon shared with us her findings on issues of gender and technology, and more specifically her researches on what computer science and computer engineering department could do to attract, retain and advance women’s representation. I feel that in her researches, there are many implications for our domain of Instructional Technology, for example
1. As far as teaching teachers to use technology in classroom, is there any difference between male teachers and female teachers? Are female teachers more afraid of learning how to using technology? Is there stereotyping existing in teacher’s training?
2. If the population of technology creators keeps severely gender imbalanced, what kind of impact will this situation bring to the domain of Instructional Technology, since Instructional Technology is somewhat a bridge of integrating technology and education?
Any ideas and thoughts are welcomed! Thank you all in advance for participating!
Jie
Gender issue is not familiar to me. In thinking of Korean public schools, most public school teachers, especially in elementary schools, are female teachers. The imbalanced gender ratio is being seriously discussed in terms of gender identity and role model building of children. I had female science teachers in middle and high schools. So, except a few male domain subjects such as computer science or physical activity, females in Korea are expanding their fields and gaining recognition as the equal workforces as men.
However, in computer science area, we have similar stereo type on IT (Informational Technology) person with the U.S. which we saw in Cohoon’s presentation. My trivial suggestion is to develop girl friendly games. I think games are important and successful introducers to computer cyber world. If we think about the most popular games, most of them are designed on the taste of boys. Boys are easily introduced to computer science as they enjoy computer shutting games. Likewise, we have games for girls; can we provide a more kind and attractive guider of computer world to girls?
I don’t know if there is any difference between male and female teachers as far as technology use in the classroom. I can only guess that since stereotyping is real, and has a real effect on behavior, that there probably is some difference overall.
I imagine that the imbalance in technology production (male bias) affects instructional technology in the same sort of way that it affects computer technology. However I think that instructional technology is less targeted at a male audience than computer gaming. I think that, for all technology (instructional and otherwise), we do need to have more balance representation in the creation of the technology. The balance needs to be one of gender, as well as other dimensions (racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, etc…).
As I know, there is gender difference in teacher technology training. During my Master period, most of my classmates are K-12 teachers. When we have courses which emphasize web tools or techniques, the female teachers would learn slowly than the male teachers. And compared with the female, the male teachers have much more interest in technology. They are eager to learn technology.
I think one of the main reasons for the problem is the stereotyping, not the ability of female. Many times, positive encourage is very important for a person’s success. Many girls group up in the environment which is full with the words” females don’t have the talent on technology”. So they need more encourage. I have read a paper said that females are very sensitive to the feedbacks of their work from others in the computer science area. If they get negative feedback, their motivation and confidence are easy to be influnced.
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