The stats about the underrepresentation of females and minorities in STEM fields of study and careers are very clear. I like the visual representation of some of these from girlswhocode.com:
Somewhere along the line, we’re losing the girls. This isn’t a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the news even a little, particularly this last year. Broadening participation in STEM, especially for girls and minority populations, has become a national focus. Everyone from classroom teachers and researchers, to toy designers, to the president of the United States is emphasizing this societal need. This blog will discuss this issue a lot, because here at MSTE, STEM education is what we do, and we’re pretty excited for the day parity is reached in engineering and technological careers. Until that day, finding ways to pique interest in STEM is imperative, and retaining students in these areas even more so.
We are starting to plan some activities for the University of Illinois’s GAMES camp this summer, which is an engaging, memorable, and enriching experience for the high school gals who come to campus to be engineers for a week. A couple of us have gotten into e-textiles and think it might be a fun way to show these future innovators some ways in which engineering can be used in ways they may not have considered.
E-textiles (the seamless integration of electronics and fabric) is not as new as it sounds. Queen Elizabeth I had gowns that were stitched with gold conductive thread (she was just missing the LEDs to make it truly spectacular). I recently read an article from the New York Times published in 1884 about “electric girls.” Mind-boggling in its concept, an incandescent girl did not light up the room with her personality, she literally lit up the room. An electric girl was some sort of rented servant who wore a lighted headpiece with the batteries hidden in “the recesses of her clothing” and would provide the apparently necessary service of having your door answered and entryway illuminated simultaneously (because having a butler open your door holding a candle was so 1883). Regardless of the absurdity, e-textiles may be old news, but thankfully progress has been made.
The High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab is responsible for the LilyPad Arduino (a small microprocessor that can easily be built into soft, flexible, fabric-based computers like purses, wrist bands, and costumes). Leah Beuchley, the developer of LilyPad, and Kanjun Qiu are authors of Sew Electric, which is a book of hands-on e-Textile and LilyPad activities. Middle school and older kids could easily follow the instructions themselves. Elementary-aged kids can do this with the assistance of an adult. Best of all, these DIY projects are pretty affordable and introduce kids to electrical engineering without removing all the fun. Want to read a book in the dark lit only by the soft glow of an LED at the end of your bookmark that you designed? Then this book is for you.
We also really love Grace Kim’s Soft Circuitry. Inventive and gorgeous. Is she an engineer, a fashion designer, or an artist? Those three terms need not be mutually exclusive. Her work is inspiring in its artistry, circuitry, and potential to ignite interest in tomorrow’s innovators, tinkerers, and makers. We’ve adapted her tutorial for an LED cuff from her Soft Circuit Workshop and made this:
Definitely not pretty, but I was thinking kids, not just girls. It took me about 90 minutes to make this from start to finish – if you were going to make it look nice (or cut straight lines, for instance) add a few extra minutes. Here's our tutorial on how to make a LED wristband with inexpensive materials.
What’s that? You can’t wait to make a blinky wristband? You want to program a LilyPad to make a light show on your backpack? So do we! Get yourself some conductive thread and start crafting. I mean, engineering.