Nearly 100 Educators Got Free Notable Women in Computing Card Decks

I designed the Notable Women in Computing Card Deck Kickstarter to send as many decks as possible to educators who couldn’t afford them. So far, over 50% of 2nd edition decks went to teachers for free.

Having suffered survived grant reporting in a past life, I made the process to request a free deck as easy as possible. I had 3 questions aside from contact info:

• What project could these decks help with?
• How have you worked in the past to connect girls and women to technical careers?
• What is your financial need?

The only reporting necessary was to send me a photo of the cards when the arrived. Everyone of the nearly 100 educators who got a deck could have fulfilled his or her obligation snapping a 8KB image of the deck in its envelope and mailing it to me. Instead, I got these (all posted with permission):

“Thank you!”

“So Stoked!”

“My students and I loved them very much.”

“In the attached picture [above], I am in a colleague’s room as we inspect all of the wonderful, notable, computer science women.”

“With February being Career & Technical Education month and March being Women’s History Month, the teachers in my department talked about a few ideas on how to incorporate the cards into lesson plans for the two months.”

[No caption, but the picture is from Mutah Knowledge Station in Mutah, Jordan]

“I only have three girls in my advanced computer science class. They were thrilled with the cards! I don’t think any of us realized the numerous contributions of women to the field of computer science and technology in general.

We were discussing developing a version of “Go Fish” using the cards. For example, do you have anyone who is a Professor? Anyone who worked with the ENIAC? Anyone who has won a Turing Award? etc…”

Here is a map of all of the places we have sent decks–it’s interactive here:

It has been such a joy working with these educators and I’m so glad we were able to connect generous Backers (who personally paid for each free deck) to people who can use the decks in exactly the right way. Such fun.

Updated to remove a photo a teacher gave me permission to post, but then rescinded permission over a year later. (She got to keep all the decks, plus the poster we sent).

Inspirational Quote:

“No one is alone.” Stephen Sondheim