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Lilith: Geek Music to Girls’ Ears

It’s a familiar story: A middle school girl stops going to the computer lab after school because boys hog the machines.

That was Susannah Camic’s experience. It bothered her enough that she wrote a 10th-grade essay about it. Her paper sparked the beginning of the Lilith Computer Group http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/lilithclub/lilith.html a club designed to get girls more
involved in computing in middle school.

By Katie Dean Wired.com

"I would go to the computer lab and sort of sit in the corner and try to make things work," Camic said.
"Middle school boys were not very amenable to sitting down with a middle school girl and explaining
how things work.

"I never really learned anything," she said. "It was always sort of a negative experience."

She shared her paper, "Helping to Bring Girls and Computers Together," with staff at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), which helped her found the
after-school club.

Lilith began in 1997 at three middle schools. Now, the group has clubs in 10 of the 11 middle schools in
Madison and holds an annual spring computer fair to bring the clubs together.

"My original expectation was to increase the comfort level and confidence of girls in relation to
computers," said Camic, now a junior at Yale University.

And according to the girls, it’s working.

"I joined in seventh grade, and I just love Lilith," said Katie U., an eighth-grader at Jefferson Middle School. "You get to try out newer technology."

Katie said the group chooses what kind of projects to do. She’s used digital cameras and made iMovies and business cards, among other activities.

Kathy Konicek, main coordinator of the Lilith Computer Group, said that online survey data show the program is making a difference.

Out of 60 girls who took the survey, 87 percent reported coming to the club on a regular basis. Half of those surveyed said the club helped them get better grades, and 80 percent said the club increased their
confidence in using computers.

Computer applications teacher Jill Olsen leads the Jefferson club, and she’s seen the Lilith girls change from hesitant to eager learners.

Olsen said that when they first started the club, boys would often be in the lab at the same time. Whenever a problem arose, "they wanted to jump up and fix everything."

"After awhile, the girls quit coming," she said.

Once the boys had their own time to compute, the girls started attending the club again.

"Now, girls have the same expertise and confidence as the boys. In the past, the boys would get the keyboard (in class). Now, there’s an argument," she said.

Olsen said the club has 15 to 30 girls participating on a regular basis. About 150 girls throughout the city are part of the Lilith Computer Group.

This year, the club is implementing a mentoring program, so that as girls continue to high school, they will have a female role model to look up to.

One advocate for girls in technology was excited to hear about Camic’s successful idea.

"I think it’s fabulous," said Cynthia Lanius, executive director of the Center for Excellence and Equity in Education http://ceee.rice.edu/ at Rice University. "I think it’s a real indication of what young people can do."

Lanius is applying for a grant from the National Science Foundation to start a computer science summer camp for high school girls, "with the goal of increasing the admission and the retention of girls in
computer science courses," she said.

Indeed, research from such organizations as the American Association of University Women http://www.aauw.org/ has documented how girls are too often left behind in technology. IDC recently released a study revealing the scant
number of women in the networking field.

http://wired.com/news/women/0,1540,51249,00.html

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