On May 10^th, 2012 over 200 grade 5 and grade 6 girls from five Lester B. Pearson School Board schools (Birchwood Elementary, Maple Grove Elementary, Mount Pleasant Elementary, Sunshine Academy, and Terry Fox Elementary) headed down to McGill University for a fantastic event.  The 4 Girls “Funshop” was organized by CLUMEQ and GenINC with sponsorship from CLUMEQ, Microsoft and other contributors.  Its intention was to expose the girls to various aspects of science and technology.  Despite some advances, there are still a minority number of girls who pursue further education and careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and this event was designed to try to peak their interest early.

The day began with a keynote address by Marie-Jo Leroux, a video game producer with UBISOFT.  She walked the girls through the typical making of a video game.  The girls were amazed that the process takes up to four years.  Beyond simply regaling them with the steps of making video games like Happy Feet and Iron Man, Marie-Jo also asked the girls to really think about what makes them happy in order to choose their career paths.  She reminded them that the path to success is not always easy, but when you love what you do the tough times are really not so bad.

Then the girls moved through three of five offered “funshops”.  Susan Ibach of Microsoft had the girls racing to complete tasks via various methods with the computer.  Students challenged each other and their teachers via the X-Box Kinect in “How Do You Talk to a Computer.”  In “I’m a Small Basic Programmer”, Genevieve L’Esperance of GenINC, walked the girls through a “recipe” to turn instructions into computer readable code.  Students left with their finished programs and were amazed at “how simple it was”.  The Montreal Girl Geeks, ran a session entitled “Building Website, No Code Required” that introduced the girls to site-builders such as WordPress, Weebly and flavors.me.  Penelope Kostopoulos of the McConnell Brain Imaging Centerintroduced the girls to the world of “3D Imaging of the Human Brain” and how important super-computing is to this process.  Finally, Nikolas Provotas and Alina Chen of Clumeq hosted “From Snowflakes to Airplanes” and “Outer Space”.  They had the girls learning about material science and participating in some hands-on experiments.

The girls were actively engaged throughout the entire day.  You could hear screams and encouraging words as the girls teamed up against each other for the Kinect challenge.  Who ever said learning only occurs when you are seated and listening to a teacher? 

Most of the participants had never done any programming before and were proud of what they were able to accomplish in just over an hour.  In addition to leaving with finished programs, many girls also left with the beginnings of their own personal websites.  Prior to this event, few of the participants had ever imagined that they could create so much on their own.

The girls, their teachers, parents and principals all reported back that this was a fabulous experience.  It was a field trip like no other, a day to remember.  We all can’t wait for next year’s event.  In the meantime we are working on ways to keep the excitement and interest alive within our schools.

Meagan Kearney