Technosisters™ Program Growth
December 2000 – January 2001
We are so happy that we have a possibility to take this mentorship program to Dr. Martin Luther King Academy in Beacon Hill area of Seattle. Mrs. Kyle James of Verizon Wireless has volunteered to spear head this effort. We are grateful for this initiative and will work very closely with her to make sure that she has all the help she needs to implement this program successfully.
Our wonderful kids at Fairmount program are making fantastic progress this year thanks to our mentors, Shannon Henry, Joyanne McDaniel, Renee Ross, and Mahnaz Javid. We are about to finish PowerPoint presentations (in one presentation Deanna wrote, "TechnoSisters changed my life"), and will begin FrontPage web authoring application in two weeks.
October – November 2000
This exciting program, designed to augment the technological fluency of girls in elementary school is in full swing for this year.
Our heartfelt thanks go to our dedicated mentors, Joyanne McDaniel, Renee Ross, Shannon Henry, and Mahnaz Javid, who tirelessly continue their weekly and after school work with our 15 returning students. In this second year of the program, curriculum will be project based and focused on five areas: Hardware mechanics, where the girls learn how to build a computer from scratch and trouble shoot; graphics, PowerPoint, FrontPage and operating systems. As you see in the pictures above, we have a group of very happy children. We thank Mrs. Kathy Hoffman, the principle of Fairmount elementary school, for her full support of this program.
topAugust – September 2001
We are resuming our mentorship program this year at Fairmount Elementary School, Everett, Washington. Our dedicated mentors, Britte Kolve and Joyann McDaniel, Ross Renee, and Mahnaz Javid will continue their once a week, two hours commitment to this program. We also would like to welcome Mrs. Lisa Enquist as our newest mentor. She is very excited about this program, and we look forward to working with her closely.
We will be getting together in a week to map a project-based curriculum covering hardware, software applications such as PowerPoint, Word & Excel, web authoring FrontPage, graphics, and online resources.
As we proudly announced above, AAUW is now actively supporting this program. This Association published a far reaching, two year research on girls interaction with technology (Tech-Savvy: Educating the girls in the page of technology). We recommend it to you as an excellent reading on the complex issues on this topic.
June – July 2000
The mentorship program is presently is in recess for the summer. We have great hopes for expanding the program to reach more girls in Fairmount Elementary School in Everett, Washington, as well as expanding our parent and teacher training programs. As we have mentioned above, we were approached by the Association for University Women to submit a proposal for funding these ideas, and we will do our best to meet their criteria and gain their further support in the coming year.
April – May 2000
The first year of this mentorship program is coming to a successful end at the end of May 2000. Twenty-one 3rd & 4th graders have had a blast. They now know how to piece a computer together, have been exposed to graphics programs, FrontPage, Windows 95 Operating System, and many other applications. Most important of all, they have become confident and fearless with computers. In a supportive environment with expert mentors who modeled the possibilities week after week throughout this year, they have learned to be creative with technology; to explore, to learn; to ask questions; to push their limits. Their motto is "TechnoSisters Rule!!!" We will have a end of a year party on May 25th and will celebrate a year full of adventure with cake, pizza, gifts, and certificates. Our thanks go to the devoted and selfless mentors: Joyanne McDaniel, Britte Kolve, Renee Ross, Kelly Milici and Patrece Banks for their tireless efforts on behalf of our kids.
February – March 2000
Our girls in this mentorship program continue to learn new skills. Our valuable mentor, Mrs. JoyAnn McDaniel has done a fantastic job of supervising this program in the absence of both Mahnaz Javid and Britte Kolve, and we gratefully thank her.
Two articles have so far been published on this mentorship program. One in the Everett Herald, Everett, Washington, dated February 27th and another one in Eastside Journal of Bellevue, Washington. We are in the process of extending this program to one more school next year and will be meeting with the superintendent of Mukilteo School District to enlist his support for providing transportation after school, as we wish to reach out particularly to those children whose parents work and cannot provide transportation for this after-school program.
January 2000
There was a front page article about TechnoSisters™ in the Everett Herald on Monday February 7th. We also had our first Parent Technology Workshop, with the Teachers Technology Workshop scheduled for this week. Thank you devoted mentors: Britte Kolve, Patrice Molinarolo, Joyann McDaniel, Kelly Milici, and Renee Ross.
December 1999
We are making progress in our efforts to augment the technological competency of our twenty-one 3rd and 4th grade girls at this site. So far, we have pulled apart four computers to allow the girls to acquaint themselves with the "guts" of these tools, have introduced them to the Internet and some search engines, and have started them on their typing practice. In the next couple of months, we will experiment with graphic arts and web page design.
More exciting is that 14 teachers have said that they would like to have our Technology Workshop which we are planning to offer in February. A similar Parents' workshop will be offered at about the same time. It is great to have the whole circle of support on board to make certain that our girls connect with technology to enjoy broader career choices later.
October 1999
TechnoSisters Mentorship Program™ is starting on October 28th, with 22 girls, 8 teachers and 20 parents. This is very, very exciting because these bright-eyed, beautiful girls want to learn everything they can about computers!! We have fantastic and dedicated mentors, dedicated parents, and interested teachers. In our first three sessions, we will focus on hardware, and have the girls take computers apart and put them back together again!! Fun!! Three 486 computers, monitors, keyboards, and printers, were donated to TechnoSisters by different people just for this purpose. We will teach the girls to become masters of the tools and show off their skills to their parents later!!
The first parent workshop will be offered in November to be followed by a teacher training workshop. We are also considering offering additional workshops to make certain that our girls are supported at home and at school. Very exciting. We meet every Thursday at 3:30 p.m. at Fairmount Elementary School, Mukilteo School District.