Move over Malibu Barbie. HTML Barbie just bought some beach-front property and you’re getting evicted.

The internet used to be limited to advanced web applications. But now, every brick-and-mortar has an online component. Banks, Grocery Stores, Schools. You name it, its virtual service is as good (if not better) than its physical equivalent. And it’s only going to continue that way.

So, if you want your children to get a job when they finish their education, they’d better know the difference between HMTL and PHP.

I know what you’re thinking. Is PHP a typo for that vaccine we have to get our girls?

Java Ain’t Just An Island in the Pacific

Just because Ruby on Rails makes you think of Dorothy walking the curb on the yellow brick road (just a little?), doesn’t mean your kids shouldn’t become proficient in computers. I’ve met great programmers who do not have a handle on the English language but wow, how they can structure a database! They can live in any country and always know they will have work. They are sought after with 4-to-5 job offers at any one time. Now, I’m not saying we should forsake our English Departments (goodness, no!) but every school should prioritize technology languages in their curriculum as much as they do Math, Science and PE. But until they do, it is the job of parents.

And I don’t mean buying them an i-Touch or a Game-boy.

Our children need to know how to program as much as they need to know how to read a map or calculate proper change at the register.

But you already know ALL of this.

Actually, if you have a boy, he’s probably already bored with Scratch and Sketch-Up. He’s asking for a summer programming classes. Easy. Done. But wait? What about your daughter?

She says she’s not interested.

Nope. That will no longer fly.

“Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one she has the means of settling well without further expense to anyone” – Jane Austen

Letting our daughters “not” learn to code is like letting our sons “not” learn to read. It’s setting your daughter up for a life of limited options. Who does that in 2013?!?

I just dropped my 9-year off at a Spring Break Tech Camp. And guess what? She’s the only girl in the camp. The rest are boys. All 15 of them. She attended a programming camp last summer and of the 22 kids, 3 of them were girls. Two of them were from other countries visiting Los Angeles for the summer.

I’m not going to delve into the reasoning for why girls aren’t drawn to computer (I’ll save that for another post). Let’s leave it at this — Computers have a “boy” thing associated with them.

But we need to power through that perception and get our girls into the computer room. A NY Time’s article “In Google’s Inner Circle, A Falling Number of Women” outlines Google’s aggressive pursuit of female technology stars because even they, a market leader, can’t fill their ranks with the 50/50 gender ratio they want. Teaching girls to excel in technology is practical, if for no other reason than to insure they have real job options when they head out into the world.

Please sign your girls up for computer class. It will make them happy and independent.

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