A tech future at their fingertips
Lawrence Tech hosts a camp designed to get girls jazzed about math and computer science
July 29, 2007
In just 12 hours, 12-year-old Brielle Woods created a Web site that featured her favorite games, videos and music.
As she stood in front of a lecture hall at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Brielle talked about her Web site's features.
Pictures of puppies and links to online games and music videos were just some of what Brielle and the 21 other girls in the lecture hall had put on their Web sites.
The girls learned about creating Web sites and other forms of technology at Camp Infinity, July 16-20 at the university.
The girls also learned how to program robots. They planned a fashion show featuring their robots after their Web site presentations July 20.
"I like working with computers," said Brielle, who attends Ludington Magnet Middle School in northwest Detroit. "I would like to be a computer engineer or do something in Web design."
For four years, Camp Infinity has been sponsored by the Michigan Council of Women in Technology Foundation and hosted by Lawrence Tech.
The program is open to girls only, in fourth through seventh grades, who live in Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties. It is free to the girls and is paid for by corporate sponsors. This year's program was paid for by a $34,000 grant from AT&T.
"This camp has two objectives," said Rosemary Bayer, president of the technology foundation. "The first is, you can do it and it's fun."
The second objective is that the girls pursue careers in the technology industry, where women are underrepresented. "The Michigan Council of Women in Technology started because there are very few women in the field," Bayer said. "I work for Sun Microsystems (in Southfield), and I looked around one day and realized I was the only woman there. We realized we needed to get more girls motivated and inspired about math and computer science."
Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.
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