Thank you! I respect your opinion as well, it's great to hear it. We all have our own version of feminism, and everyone is working towards similar goals. Man, making the next Tamagotchi would be amazing, I wonder if anyone has started?
Imagine if it evolved differently based on how you programmed it and other virtual pets you encountered.
Could be really fun, but I understand if you have too much on your plate as is!
One interesting aspect that GoldieBlox's research mentioned was that they found girls became more engaged when there was a story with a purpose (e.g. help this puppy) or opportunity for story-telling.
This made me wonder if there would be potential for combining an already popular electronic toy concept (virtual pets) with a programming environment that was also a story-telling environment. The behavior of the pet would be determined by a state machine generated from the story.
For example:
Hello my name is [Oinky].
When I am [tired] I [sometimes] want to [play].
When I am [hungry] I [always] want to [eat].
I ended up getting a bit distracted by the more generic question of how to produce a platform of enclosures & electronics that would enable people to prototype hand-held Arduino-based devices. (And then other things.) But I still think the idea is worth exploring.
Some online notes on these two projects:
* http://www.labradoc.com/i/follower/p/project-pet-designer-to...
* http://www.labradoc.com/i/follower/p/project-arduino-enclosu...
Offers of investment and/or consulting welcomed. :D
(With regard to a non-gendered Computer Science curriculum "Computer Science Unplugged" might be of interest: http://csunplugged.org/ )
[0] https://arduboy.com [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDXsLxPPB88
Also, if you haven't already, you might be interested in researching Dr. Janese Swanson the founder of the "GirlTech" toy company (from mid-90s to early 2000s, I think) and maybe even trying to get in contact with her as she might have some valuable insight/opinions/contacts from her own experience for you.
I always appreciated the perspective that Pam Fox shared in her "I’m A Barbie Girl In A CS World" presentation:
* https://www.slideshare.net/wuzziwug/im-a-barbie-girl-in-a-cs... * http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIhPYefRndc
How's your experience of the Nordic nRF51822 been? My impression has been that they have some great technology but their tooling/SDK support doesn't seem to put much weight on easing transition from one SDK/IC version to another.