In February, Erin Bried was perusing the magazine rack with her 5-year-old daughter, Ellie, when she noticed something unsettling about the magazines for girls: Their covers all had dolls, lip gloss and princesses on them; they all had articles about “how to get pretty hair, how to have good manners” and “how to handle friendship drama,” Bried said in an interview.
The problem? Ellie didn’t like princesses all that much; she liked outer space and climbing trees. “We left that day empty-handed,” Bried said. “She wasn’t interested, and I was annoyed.”
The more she thought about it, the more she realized “we have to do better” in the content we offer young girls, Bried said.
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!