December 1998 — Features
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The Cyber Sisters Club: Using the Internet to Bridge the Technology Gap with Inner City Girls
Making Technology Relevant
For males the hook of technology is often the machine itself, whereas females buy into technology when they see how it relates to their interests or tasks.[5] During early Internet activities in the Cyber Sisters Club, the students linked to sites of special interest to girls like Girl Power!, Netgalz! and chat sites from the Club's homepage. They quickly began to pick out favorite sites of their own from these links and by searching Yahooligans (advertised on the Club's homepage as a source of info about Leonardo DiCaprio).
By the third session a page of their favorite sites was attached to the homepage. The girls revisited these sites on Winnie the Pooh, Leo DiCaprio, Disney and the Titanic every session. Once they discovered the audio clips of the Spice Girls, the Backstreet Boys and other favorite musicians, CDNow became the number one favorite of the Cyber Sisters. As Maggie Steele experienced with third grade minority students, popular music can provide a very effective lure into the world of technology.[6] Anyone who uses computers regularly knows that technology and frustration sometimes go hand in hand. Because girls are more likely to give up on computers after negative technology experiences than boys, it is important to minimize failure in the computer lab. In the Cyber Club, we tried to maximize feelings of success by anticipating problems, by controlling technical factors and by adding new skills gradually.[7]
Using new equipment is often a challenge for hesitant or novice users. At their school, the girls had become familiar with Macintosh computers. Although the multimedia IBM laptops were usually very popular with young users, differences between the two systems could cause problems if not addressed. For example, the IBM's right mouse button is assigned distinct functions, which students accustomed to a single button Macintosh mouse tend to accidentally activate. Making the students aware of Mac/PC differences, like the mouse buttons, on the first day helped to avoid potential frustrations.
Although our ISDN connection generally provides good access speed on the Internet, downloading large graphics and audio files can require a degree of patience alien to excited 5th grade girls. The students tended to keep clicking instead of waiting for a file to load. After the first few sessions of the Club, the students used the stickpoint and buttons on the laptop instead of the mouse, which slowed their clicking down to a more productive rate.
Introducing New Skills
When the inevitable glitches with equipment or the Internet did occur, the staff stressed that these problems were minor and that difficulties with technology were unavoidable but worth enduring. The students were shown how to get back on track, and were given any tips for avoiding the problem in the future. Introducing too many skills at once can also cause problems.
Each meeting the girls learned a few new skills while practicing those mastered in previous sessions. The first day they began by sitting down at a computer connected to the Cyber Sisters site on the Internet. They learned the basics of navigating the Net through an online Internet Primer. Using this tutorial, they learned to click on links, to use the back and stop browser buttons, to enter a URL in the address box, and to search Yahooligans! for a subject. For the remainder of the class, they explored the Internet using their newly acquired skills.
