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Engineering Toy To Empower Girls
By Kara Pecknold - Oct 12, 2012
This week saw the emergence of the first International UN Day of the Girl Child, which is intended to promote the empowerment of young girls around the world. One obvious way to do this is to encourage their access to education. Because of this, we thought it was only fitting to celebrate the development of a toy that is meant to promote the education of girls and more specifically, their learning in science and math.
Debbie Sterling was discouraged by the stereotypes that suggested that boys should play with Bob the Builder while girls were left to dress up Barbie. With 89% of male engineers in her program at Stanford, it was obvious that there was a gender gap in the field. But more notably, Sterling was aware that there was a significant gap in the formative space of play. Because of this, she was motivated to spend a year of research with over 100 children in order to develop GoldieBlox: a construction toy for girls.
GoldieBlox has just launched its interactive book and construction toy series that combines storytelling and building in a novel approach to encourage girls to play with construction toys.
The book and toy series stars "Goldie Blox," the girl engineer character who builds simple machines to solve problems and help her friends. It introduces new engineering principles with each story, including lessons around wheels and axles, pulleys, force and friction.
The first book and toy in the series, "Goldie Blox and the Spinning Machine", is perfect for ages 5-9 and retails for $30. The expected delivery date is February 2013.
Since GoldieBlox met its original Kickstarter targets, Sterling has expanded the campaign to include two additional stories and characters.
To support the growth of GoldieBlox and inspire the next generation of female engineers, you can check out their campaign that closes on October 18.
Kara Pecknold
Kara works as a Senior Design Researcher at frog in Munich, Germany. Prior to this, she pursued her Master's degree in Design at Emily Carr University, where she focused her research on cross-cultural design process. Her graduate work in Rwanda has been included as a case study in IDEO's Human-Centered Design Toolkit.
She remains passionate about exploring design with rural communities and emerging markets.
2 Comments
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Hi Sarah, This is outstanding. I've sent it to all my friends with kids and plan on getting one for my niece. Question... any thoughts about what might be missing in boys' toys besides Bob the Builder? As a former Jem dolll fan (sorry Barbie) I see how relational, people skills translated to my adult hood. Perhaps it wasn't _all_ because of Jem, but there is something to be said about that, I think. Any thoughts? Best of luck to you! I hope to see more!!Report as spam
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I saw this concept toy come through my facebook feed and I was delighted. I was also happy to see my 9 year old niece receive a box of pink and purple and girly-colored legos for her birthday. My hope is to see many girls enter the realm of engineering and bring with them new ideas that can only be conceived by a XX chromosome.!Report as spam
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