More Coding More Girls
It is known that in the field of coding there is little interest of female students. According to the 2017 edition of the OECD’s Education at a Glance report, 3 of each 4 students who prefer IT are male students. In the same report, the ratio of female students undertaking studies in the field of IT is reported as 19%. It seems that it is not different in Turkey. However, it is vital that female students who study IT get quality education in this field and use technology efficiently. The aim of this study is to increase the interest of girls in ICT and coding. The target group of this project is composed of 20 female students and 1000 participants registered of Atatürk Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School in Altındağ, Ankara. The Project worked with age group between 15 and 18. Workshop took place our schools Coding Lab. Students learned coding with BBC:Microbit by Selçuk Yusuf Arslan. The workshop took 5 days. The students conducted 8 different projects for 2 days. An project exhibit organized by students. After exhibit, we organized a conference about importance of coding with Microsoft and Hacettepe University Life Long Learning Center. Female students explained their projects for more than 1000 students in the school. After that with 250 students attendance, coding and career presentation was made. The presentation made by İsmet BENLİ, the Microsoft instructor. The certificates were given after the training that lasted about 1 hour.
This project was supported by Science on Stage Europe!
Prestigious Award from STEM Alliance
I participated High Level STEM Event organized by STEM Alliance in Malta on 21-22 March 2019. This event brought together key stakeholder from industry, education and national policy makers to promote to STEM Education agenda at a political level. Mr. Stefaan Hermans (European Comission), Mr. Evarist Bartolo (Minister for Education and Employment of Malta), Dr. Ian Borg (Minister for Transport of Malta), Representative of Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, Lego, IBM etc. were participated the event. My “More Coding More Girls” project was awarded at Diversity in STEM Competition. I took my award from Mr. Stefan Griebel from Texas Instruments. I would like to thank European Schoolnet, Scientix and STEM Alliance represantavies for this excellent event. Also I would like to thank Ms. Alexa Joyce, Microsoft Director of Education System Leaders for her blog post about my award and project.
You can see the blog: https://blogs.microsoft.com/eupolicy/2019/04/03/making-an-impact-for-st…
I was one of the speakers of BBC micro:bit Live 2019 event in Manchester, United Kingdom on 4-5 October 2019. I gave a presentation about my More Coding More Girls project which was awarded by STEM Alliance in scope of Diversity in STEM competition. I also mentioned about my main supporter Science on Stage Europe and IDE Danismanlik.
I participated #T4SolutionsChallenge with my More Coding More Girls initiative. You can support my idea to click on the link: https://www.earthproject.org/challenge/selcuk-yusuf-arslan
Code with girls, code for the planet!
You can see the news:
http://yegitek.meb.gov.tr/www/stemde-cesitlilik-diversity-in-stem-temal…
http://mtegm.meb.gov.tr/www/bilisim-teknolojileri-ogretmeninin-stem-bas…
https://www.sabah.com.tr/egitim/2019/04/03/turk-ogretmenin-stem-basarisi
And many thanks to Habertürk TV for their interview…
https://www.haberturk.com/kuresel-ogretmen-odullu-selcuk-kizlar-icin-da…
Dear Selcuk, Thank you for posting all the updates you and the teams are doing in Turkey for STEM education. You are an inspiration for so many other teachers in Turkey. I am so happy to read that Turkey Ministry of National Education has launched, jointly with Google, an ambitious programme of Teacher Professional Development. Your experience can inspire the pilot scheme of Teacher In-Service Professional development program- a programme that will reach out to 200,000 class teachers in the first stage and then to the 1 million teachers in total. The Digital Transformation for Teachers Program’s main objective aims to create the roadmap for development of technological and ICT skills for students. Teachers' skills are crucial in this and future endeavour.
Dear Lida, thank you for your comment. I am very happy for this Teacher Professional Development Programme that Google and MoE colloboration. Last summer, MoE and Microsoft conducted a similar project about Coding. Thanks to this project, about 200 teachers learned C# Software Development Fundamentals and dissemination activities are continuing...
Dear Selcuk, thank you also from my side for sharing your initiatives to support a wider female students participation to IT programmes. This seems a missed opportunity for both the ICT market and as well as for women; the advent of the platform economy, for example for software development, could offer to women new and flexible occupations. Your project outputs could be used for students’ carrier guidelines and make IT subjects, such as coding, more appealing to female students. Please keep sharing your initiatives to better connect policies and practices (and vice-versa).
Dear Alessandro, thank you for your feedback. IT offers really good opportunities for female students. Of course, I will continue to share my work. All the best
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