Robogals
Getting girls into electronics is the motivation for a new student run program at the University of Melbourne. Robogals is a Lego robot building program and competition aimed at girls in grades five to seven. It is the brain child of a group of female students from the Melbourne School of Engineering, with the goal of attracting more females into the field.
The Robogals Inc. vision is to be an international robotics competition whereby undergraduate university students design lessons and challenges for upper-primary school (years 5, 6 and 7) girls to promote engineering, robotics and technology amongst young females.
The project started in March 2008, following a decision by a group of second year engineering friends to build a robot together. They brainstormed what they wanted the robot to do, the robot’s design and all the components needed. Over the mid-year break, they designed the lessons and competition challenges. The group also allocated girls to different leadership roles within the project.
What started as an idea to combine robotics and education at one school has expanded out to be for more than one school and involves a robotics competition so that more girls can be influenced, and can exercise the skills they learned in the lessons in a challenging but fun environment.
There are now over 80 students involved in Robogals – mostly Melbourne University students, but a couple from other universities as well.
More information
- Robogals have a website: http://robogals.org.au/
- Robogals Inc are on facebook
- Watch Robogals featured on a recent edition of Visions, the regular University of Melbourne podcast