This course will become read-only in the near future. Tell us at community.p2pu.org if that is a problem.
This professional development course pools resources on topics such as building your personal brand, running a team, and managing projects for mentors and teachers participating in Technovation Challenge.
Welcome to Technovation Challenge!
This course is a space for mentors and teachers everywhere to chat about their professional challenges, and to share experiences and best practices for working with your teams of Technovation girls. As part of the course, we included places where you can connect and post events and meetings ("meetups") in your area. You can also arrange virtual meetings ("hangouts") to connect with mentors and teachers from around the world.
We have included resources to help guide your personal development. These resources are optional and can be used to start conversations on P2PU, virtual hangouts, or meetups. They may also be helpful during your mentoring experience. Please share your own resources such as links to videos and articles. We will be adding a section for Technovation-specific tips and strategies.
Special thanks to the volunteer NYC-based professional women's group So What's On Your Plate for putting together the resources for this course.
“So What’s On Your Plate” (SWOYP) is a global community that focuses on bringing a diverse group of ambitious women together to foster friendships, build skills relevant to their lifestyles, and give them an avenue to make an impact in their local communities.
You can connect with SWOYP on Facebook and Twitter.
Introduce yourself to other mentors and teachers by adding a comment to this task.
Note: Please be sure to review and follow our P2PU posting guidelines.
Hi I'm Toni Walden, and I am a Research Scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. This is my first year participating in Technovation, and I'm excited to mentor students at Wheeler Magnet School :)
Yerba Buena High School in San Jose needs one or two mentors for motivated young women. We meet Monday nights 6-8. Please reply if interested.
Hi Fred-
This is a mentorship-training course for registered teachers and women in technology participating in Technovation Challenge.
We do not have a registered profile matching your P2PU account that indicates participation in our program as a teacher. If you would like to learn more about our program please reach out to me directly at Jenna@IridescentLearning.org so that I may suggest ways for you to possibly contribute and can point you in the right direction.
Thanks,
Jenna and the Technovation Team
We reached out to a virtual mentor today and need to reach out for 1 more mentor as well.
If you can give us 30 minutes per week mentoring a team virtually or face to face, email me.
We have 5 teams of girls have one mentor on site, two mostly virtually and need two more but hoping that the one we contacted today comes through.
So, we need at least one more mentor. We have a terrific group of girls so come join the fun in Marlborough, MA at the Advanced Math & Science Academy on Thursday evenings.
Kelly P, kelpowers@gmail.com
Hi everyone,
It's great to be part of such a driven group of women. This is my first year with Technovation and adore the girls at Lycee Francais in San Francisco. We've already had a lot of fun brainstorming ideas and sharing our technical interests.
I'm a web developer in the bay making genomic sequencing tools for researchers and always looking for new projects, especially Health 2.0 challenges.
Best wishes with everyone's team!
Lauren Kroll
Mentors Needed in Philadelphia, PA
Do you have any contacts in Philadelphia? We are looking for 1-2 mentors for a team of girls working out of the The Academy of Natural Sciences museum of Drexel University. Let us know if you can help!
Check out this Women 2.0 PITCH Conference for women-led startups! Similar to Technovation, but for adults! Technovation will have a booth, so stop by and say hello if you are there :)
We had our mini-Hack Day yesterday with all our three teams and two of our mentors present. It was a great start. I thought we could cover a lot in four hours but the time flew by very fast. We will not be able to meet next week as the students have midterm. We will however arrange to cover missed time in subsequent weeks.
That's great Chinma! Good luck to your students on their midterms. I'm sure you will be able to catch up with the material in the coming weeks :)
We are very excited to welcome our mentor Chrystal to our team at Haverhill High School. Our small team is so lucky to have found such a committed mentor- willing to work with my students. We have had an alumni of mine, who is a senior in college- Nicole- come in during the pre-weeks to hlep us with the software and brain storming who will also be facetiming with the group. We have speakers set up to speak to the topic for about 4 of the 12 weeks and with Chrystal as a mentor the girls will have a great experience. We are up and running and ready for a great 12 week program!!
That's awesome Elaine! I'm so happy to hear everything is going well, and you're ready to go :)
The teachers making this program happen for their students are the most dedicated teachers I could imagine ever being associated with. This program is alot of work for the teacher. It is worth it for the students, but alot of work ontop of constant demands placed on high school teachers. Good luck to all the teams, this is an important program for these girls. One of my girls repeating the program is an English Language learner who is now a sophomore, who says she wants to be a soft-ware engineer. She works hard at this and other academic opportunities and I am very proud of her.
Hi All,
My name is Padmaja Bandaru. I am a teacher at AMSA charter school. My friend Kelly Powers and I ran this program last year too. Out students had a valueble experience last year. A couple of the girls from last year - inspired by Technovation are running this program for our middle school girls at the same time.
We have 5 teams this year and I am excited to be a part of this program again!!
Hi everyone!
I'm Trish Fontanilla and I'm the Community Manager at video messaging startup, Vsnap. We're currently based out of MassChallenge, a startup accelerator on the waterfront of Boston.
I had an incredible time as a mentor last year and wrote a piece about my experience on BostInno and actually mentioned TC today for a Thank Your Mentor Day post as well.
Unfortunately, I don't have a car or resources to rent one each week (yay startup life! haha), so it's been hard to find a local school that's accessible by public transportation that also has someone with programming experience. And I don't know if I'll be able to teach myself AppInventor in time to work with a school in town. I am however open to some virtual mentorship opportunities. I was employee #2 at Vsnap, so I've gone through the motions of everything that goes on in startup life from day 1, minus actually creating the app (although I have done mocks and helped design features).
Please reach out if you're interested in working together! My email is trish@vsnap.com
Have a great day!
Hi Tish!
Thanks for posting. Trish was a mentor at our site last year, and she was one of the best mentors, and I'm excited that you're joining us again this year!
Tahani
Hi Trish,
Thanks for volunteering. You must know about the mentor course that you can review at your leisure. I will get back to you on the times for this week.
Thanks,
Kelly P
Mentor a Team Virtually
Are you a mentor without a team? Would you like to work with a team virtually? Let us know on this thread!
-Jenna
Denver mentors needed!
Does anyone have connections to the Denver, CO area? We are looking for 5-10 women who are interested in mentoring a group of Girl Scouts for a series of weekend Technovation workshops. Let me know if you have any contacts in this area!
AnnaLise
I posted the request to twitter let's see what happens. Perhpas the people in charge of this event will have some connections.
https://sites.google.com/site/girlsleadtheway/
Hi all,
I'd like to announce two new projects we are starting:
Mentor of the Week
We would like to feature one mentor each week who can share her story (I'll do an interview), and give advice to the girls. I'd like to align the mentors with topics if possible. For example, it would be great to have a user-interface designer featured for our UI week, etc.
Are you interested in telling your story? Or would you like to nominate your mentor to be featured? Please send me an email: annalise@iridescentlearning.org and tell me a little bit about yourself (or the mentor you are nominating). We will also need a headshot of you and a photo of you with your team. We'll review the submissions and choose one mentor for each week who will be interviewed and featured on our Tumblr blog.
Guest Bloggers
In addition to the featured mentor, we will also be publishing a blog post about each week's topic, written by mentors, teachers, or outside "experts" about each topic. If you or someone you know is qualified to write an article about one of our weekly topics, please email me: annalise@iridescentlearning.org with some information about your background and what you plan to write about.
Thanks in advance for your involvement in these projects! I look forward to hearing from you.
-AnnaLise
Hi Annalise
I am back, and I can't wait to mentor again for Technovation.
Teija,
So happy to hear that you have joined again! That's wonderful. Have you been able to connect with a school yet? You can check out our map of schools here: http://bit.ly/TeacherMap2013
We are having a hack day at Stanford this Saturday and I'm about to send you the calendar invite. Hope you can make it!
AnnaLise
MENTORS NEEDED FOR JULIA MORGAN SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
Hi all,
The Juiia Morgan School for Girls (an all-girls middle school in Oakland, CA) is hoping to run a Technovation class as part of their regular curriculum this year. They are waiting to announce the course until they are sure they can get enough mentors for their girls who can come at the following times:
WED. 8:15-10 AM or 3:30-5 PM
Is anyone available for one of those times? Please help us spread the word to any graduate students or folks who might have a flexible schedule who could mentor these girls. Thanks!
AnnaLise
Nick,
I'm sorry to hear that you don't have a mentor yet. Did you try reaching out to anyone on the Mentor Matching Map? Here is the link to our permission forms.
South Bay Mentors-- is anyone available to mentor Nick's girls at Yerba Buena High School?
AnnaLise
Any chance you want to work virtually with one of my team in Brooklyn, NY? We are meeting wed, fri afternoons 2- 4 EST, Of course, not for the enture 4 hours.
Thanks, Sara
Sara, we may have team-less mentors or potential mentors attending our Hack Day in NYC on Jan 27, just to give you the heads up. Angélica
Hi!
I'm Kate, a software developer from Nova Scotia. I'm working with the Girls Tech League as a mentor. We've got five groups of five girls.
I've worked with high school students in the past for women in tech events, but I'm looking forward to this new program.
Hi everyone!!! We are looking for mentors here in Columbia, Missouri. If we have any midwestern's, please let me know. This is our first year and we have 5 girls, a teacher, and an organizer.
Josh Paley form Gunn High School in Palo Alto here. My colleague, Megan Stauffer, and I are in dire need of four mentors. Two teams can meet on Mondays, two can meet on Thursdays. (Scheduling is a real pain around here.)
If you are interested, please reply by email to both of us so the right and left hands are not wondering what each other is doing:
Megan: mstauffer@pausd.org
Josh: josh.paley@gmail.com
Hi Josh, Megan,
My schedule is not ideal at the moment but I will work with you for as long as I can. I spoke with a friend last night about this project and he seems interested. I'll get him to touch base with you both if he does decide to join.
bonny.lai@gmail.com
Hi Josh and Megan,
I may have found an engineer who's interested in mentoring, Victoria, she'll be contacting you both soon!
Cheers!
Kamilah
Hi Josh,
It was great meeting you and the girls on Saturday! I'm looking forward to working with the team.
Greetings All,
I'm Dametria from Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology located in Conyers, Ga. I have two group of five girls, the Rockdale App Pixies and Rockdale App Fairies. Looking to have a great time programming apps and meeting new peolple. Need a mentor for the two groups; if interested please contact me.
Hi,
I have been asking friends at different companies to post for Technovation to find more mentors.
What is the time committment required from the mentors per week?
Thanks,
Mita
Hi Mita,
Awesome, that's a great idea!! The time committment is 2 hrs/week. I hope you find someone soon, let us know if you have any more questions.
Tahani
Hi Mita,
Thanks for helping recruit more tech mentors. We envision mentors working with their team of five girls for approx. 2 hours a week for the 12-weeks (Jan 21-Apr 13). This commitment can be split between two mentors and this arrangement has worked well for mentors in the past.
If a mentor does not have the time to commit 12 or 24 hours this spring, they may also want to check in with a team who may just want occassional feedback on their app, business plan, etc. If they would like to help that way, they can sign up on P2PU and look for teams they can help throughout the 12-weeks.
Thanks again,
Angélica
Hi Laura
I am not from the area, but did a search on Google.
Your best resource for Columbia is probably the University of Missouri. Here is their CS & IT dept page - http://engineering.missouri.edu/cs/. You can also try their business school - http://business.missouri.edu/. Try to reach out to women faculty and find women and tech clubs, that may be a good place to try.
Have you reached out to IBM? They have a branch in Columbia. http://www-03.ibm.com/employment/us/jobs/columbia_mo.html
Try these resources too:
http://womensnetworkcomo.com/
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/women-in-business/
https://www.facebook.com/GirlsInTechMidMO
http://columbia.startupweekend.org/
You can use the templates on our resources page to craft an email - http://iridescentlearning.org/programs/technovation-challenge/involved/start-a-team/resources/. Sometimes just making a call and saying you are looking for a mentor for a team of girls for Technovation Challenge can also get you referred to the right person faster.
Best,
Angélica
