Hi my friends. CA here and this week's
book pick is the picture book
Who Says Women Can't be Computer Programmers: The Story of Ada Lovelace. The reason I chose
this book is because it's all about a
field of work, a computer programming,
that has biased, that it's something that
men and boys are interested in. And as
somebody who works in digital and
computers, I thought this was a great fit
as a story to encourage young girls that
computers are an area that women can
play not only play party now but played
a part in historically. Her mother, Ava's
mother, she didn't want her daughter to
grow up with a wild imagination like her
father, the poet Lord Byron, so she raised
Ava with the mind of a mathematician
with all of her studies. There was a
chance meeting with the scientist
Charles Babbage that sparked Ava's
interest. So she was intrigued by the
inventions that Charles had come up with
the machine that he created and it was
seeing this machine where she realized
that her interest in sort of math and
imagination can work hand in hand. So all
the stuff that her mother was trying to
get her away from actually played a big
part in taking somebody else's idea and
thinking bigger. While Charles had the
original idea of the analytical engine,
to weave and calculate numbers to do whatever you coded them to do. Ava's imagination
took her into seeing how this machine
could do more than just numbers but also
be used to display pictures. Very similar
to what computers do today. There's a few
things I liked about the book is, one
just this idea that imagination and sort
of science, maths can work together. They don't have to be a distinct difference
between them. Actually imagination
can fuel a lot of great ideas based on
math and science and what Ava is done
and can see the possibility of a machine
or calculation or a thought into a
bigger future picture. An imagination is
one of those things that I think more
for our kids that we need to encourage
and this is a great story to talk to
that point. She had enough courage in
herself or comfort in herself to ask
those questions about how sort of things
work and have you thought of. And so she
even, as a girl, didn't let the whole
mindset that girls shouldn't necessarily
be educated, the purpose of girls is to
be married and raise a happy family. She thought of herself beyond that and
fed her interest and desire in
understanding and and seeing how
something can be taken to the next level.
Which i think is a great example for our
girls, for our daughters now. Who Says
Women Can't be Computer Programmers. A good
addition to your home library to expose
girls to a variety of other career
choices or paths that in a lot of times
have been viewed as purely something
dominated by men. Not even just now, we're hearing about more women entering these
fields. But just historically we're
seeing that there were some pretty
single-minded strong ambitious women
who did kind of start to pave the way
for more women to enter those areas. I'm here on Wednesday talking
about books for kids, a little bit of
geek twist, maybe books that you haven't
thought of adding to your child's home
library. If you like this content, like to
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video is published. And until next time,
one to beam out. [whoooo]
[music]
