Giving the cs4fn 'Women in computing' school talk

This page contains resources for anyone wanting to give the cs4fn 'women in computing' talk in schools.

Summary

Although people often think Computing is only for men, women have played a pivotal role in the subject and continue to do so. This talk covers past, present and future. We show that women like Ada Lovelace were among the pioneers who kick-started the computing revolution. Women are also leading players now in academia and industry, with modern technology such as search engines only possible because of the ideas of women. Finally we show that female students are amongst the most successful and so will be driving the revolutions to come. We hope to inspire girls to become those future pioneers, but whether it is the career for them or not believe all students should understand the role women have played.

Suitability

This talk has been given successfully with strong feedback to a a wide range of age groups from Year 7 (age 11-12) to Year 13 (age 17-18). It has also been given to both all female and mixed male-female groups.

Time allowed

We normally allow 50-60 minutes for this talk depending on how much discussion there is, and how many side stories we go down. For shorter talks it is possible to just skip some of the women mentioned, or give very brief outlines rather than detailed discussion of their achievements.

Credits

This talk was written by Paul Curzon of Queen Mary, University of London as part of the cs4fn project with support from the Westfield Trust, EPSRC and Google.