The program, now in its third year, is funded by the National Science Foundation. Females tend to look right through technical objects at their functions in ways that aren't conducive to helping them think of themselves as potential designers and makers of technology. To foster girls' mechanical imagination, the Center for Children and Technology created a virtual design center where girls can identify everyday problems such as how to organize things, find the perfect pair of jeans or remember to come home on time from the library or a friend's house and design and invent solutions. They can also engage in online puzzles and interactive activities that help them perceive everyday devices such as sewing machines and dishwashers as a culmination of a series of design choices, animate inventions they create by using Internet-based multimedia tools and chat with peers and female designers and engineers about their ideas. The X-ray view is the most important, said Bennett, because it allows them to speculate about how technology works.
Video games are children's gateways to computers.
And ultimately this has ramifications for the kinds of careers people choose. Cover Page for this Issue APA Home Page .