What P2PU can learn from teenage girls…

Technovation hackdays all over the world – pic courtesy of Iridescent

The Technovation Challenge on P2PU is a project run by of Iridescent  (a US-based non-profit) that brings together scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, and teachers. The challenge equips girls to become technologically literate, and gives them the skills they need to be  able to initiate and lead disruptive innovations. Girls in this challenge are learning how to build mobile apps. It’s inspiring stuff, and this comment from one of the mentors sums it all up: 

By working on their own they were experimenting with the tool more and therefore learning more faster. They started showing us capabilities of the tool that weren’t documented (these are girls who have never coded a single line before). The girls who were faster started mentoring their peers. It also allowed we mentors to spend time with the girls who were struggling without creating peer pressure on them to ‘hurry up’. Everyone was fully engaged. At the end we had show and tell — some of the girls invented new ways to code or had added capabilities completely on their own. This was the first exercise!

There have been Technovation Hack Days all over the world, including Canada, Ukraine, India, Yemen, Nigeria and Brazil. Girls are learning how to build apps, like Paint Pot and add to the great number of hilarious cat photos on the web (something P2PU highly approves of).

We’ll be following these amazing girls with great interest – keep up the great work!