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Research by Tesco that questioned 1000 parents and their children revealed that girls over seven are ahead of boys (who have traditionally been equal with girls at that age and way ahead in older age brackets) when it comes to competency with computers. Girls proved more competent than boys when it came to searching on Google, editing pictures and social networking. Somewhat paradoxically, another survey by BECTa (the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency), of 4000 further education students, found that only 29% of females felt ‘very confident’ about using IT, compared with 45% of males. Maybe this is just a reflection of women underestimating themselves, as we tend to do, or maybe there are just less women than men out there that feel they have strong IT skills. Either way, at least it looks like there is a bright future ahead for women in technology with the seven plus female generation steaming ahead!
My wife is more than computer literate and although my mid-teen daughters appeared to be whiz's at seven or eight they seem to have hit a wall when the ipod came along. Now they tend to specialise in ripping CD's, chat, getting hacked and breaking laptops {~4 times a year}. I must add that they can also research quite well, as evidenced by their school marks, and are no doubt expert at uploading pictures and video to whatever in-fashion social networking site (where they've added a couple of years to their ages) and which they don't think their parents know about yet.
They did almost surprise me when we restricted access to the internet and blocked some sites but eventually I had to block all the anonymous proxy servers at the router so they couldn't 'sneak' past the filters. I suppose this proves they are good at either research or social networking as well as computer literate - to find out how to beat parental controls and almost succeed in covering their tracks.
They are both musicians, although it appears they are 'traditional' musos showing little interest in hooking instruments up to computers despite being equipped to do so.
I expect they'll move out around the time they start subtracting a couple of years from their ages....although I have warned them that the 'fib' might come back to bite them in this digital world where sometimes 'facts' can last forever.
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A community for all professionals in IT dedicated to encouraging and empowering women who are currently working in the technology sector.
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