Home on the Web

By Richard Borreca
Star-Bulletin

Friday, February 21, 1997


Internet tapping
into girls market

Janese Swanson, founder of Girl Tech and former producer of the popular Carmen Sandiego game, says the 10 million girls 6 to 10 years old represent an untapped market.

Supplying that market can go either of two ways. Mattel is readying a new Barbie CD-ROM allowing girls to cut, curl, brush, style and color Barbie's hair on a computer screen.

Or girls can explore http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/women/ intro.html.

That's the site put up by NASA to encourage more young women to pursue careers in math, science and technology.

While most scientists at NASA are men, there are some famous women there, too, including Mae Jemison, Sally Ride and Shannon Lucid.

The NASA site includes information for teachers and students plus access and offline information about organizations working to increase the number of girls going into math, science and technology-based fields. Also there are teaching guides and materials to provide insight on reducing inequities in teaching these subjects.

There is a CHAT where students can "talk" live with women scientists about their jobs and technical topics particular to their field of work.



"Home on the Web" is a weekly Friday feature of the Star-Bulletin.
Richard Borreca can be reached by e-mail at rborreca@pixi.com



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