 Good morning, and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time, but if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show as we are doing today, and it will be posted to our website and our archives for you to watch at any time at your convenience. And I'll show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our archive recordings. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone you think would be interested in any of the topics we have on Encompass Live. For those of you not from Nebraska, the Nebraska Library Commission is the state agency for libraries. This would be similar to your state library, possibly. So we provide services and resources to all types of libraries in the state. So we have shows on Encompass Live for all types of libraries, public, academic, K-12, corrections, museums, archives, really anything and everything. Our only criteria is that it's something to do with libraries. We do book reviews, interviews, mini training sessions, demos of services and products, all sorts of stuff. We have Nebraska Library Commission staff that come on the show sometimes to talk about things we're doing here through the commission or just to present things from here. We also bring in guest speakers sometimes and from all across the country. And that's what we have. Actually, we have a mixture of that today. It is also the last Wednesday of the month. So that means it is pretty sweet tech day. Yay. Every month, the last Wednesday of the month, Amanda Sweet, who is our technology innovation librarian. Good morning, Amanda. Good morning. She comes on to share something tech related with us. We sometimes have other shows on techie things, but you can always guarantee that the last Wednesday of the month will always be something tech focused from Amanda. And she has actually brought on with us today Sarah, who's from Tech Girls. And she's going to tell us all about that. So I'm not sure how you all want to do this. Amanda, start or Sarah, what's what the plan is, but it's all Sarah. She's got this cover. Yeah. So, so I mean, so how did you all get all connected with doing this actually? So I actually, I heard about Tech Girls through a conference that I went to. It was either the internet librarian or the computers and libraries conference might have been both. And so I found out about it through there. And then I was like, cool, awesome. I signed up for the mailing list and I've been tracking it for a while. And then I got an email from Sarah about like some of the services and what's available. And she asked if I had any questions and I was like, you know, as it happens, I do. So here we are. Yes. And I got the answer. So that all the answers. That's where all your questions answered about Tech Girls. Right. So Sarah, go ahead and tell us all about. What does. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm super excited to talk with everyone about Tech Girls. And if you've never heard of us, I'm going to answer all your questions hopefully today and hopefully get you involved in some way with your library. So let's get started. We will have time at the end for Q&A. I will try to cover like all my bases, of course, but, you know, questions come up. I could definitely put them in the chat and we can address them, maybe periodically or, you know, towards the end is always a good one too. So. All right. So who am I? I am Sarah Neiman. I am a senior specialist at Comtea Spark, which I'll talk about how we're related in the Tech Girls arena. I am an experienced educator. I taught for about eight years. I taught history and civics education and all the in-between at the middle school level in the Chicagoland area. So I definitely have a strong passion for education and ed tech. And I specifically work with volunteers, but specifically organizations that want to bring our program to their organization. And I really work nationally. So any organization, nonprofits, school, anybody that's an organization qualifies to work with me. And I also manage our Teen Advisory Board, which is a current membership of 55 members, which I'll talk about later, what they are and how they are involved with us. So that's just a little bit about me. So who are we? Tech Girls is actually a nonprofit program of Comtea Spark. We really want to help middle school girls, so fifth through eighth grade, to explore the possibility of technology and really let them explore all the possible careers that could be within that bubble. And we really create a fun, interactive way. They're called Tech Shops, which I'll talk about. And they're led by industry professionals. So companies may lead our workshops, community members, parents. We have teens that get involved with us, and we really want to inspire girls to explore tech and all that it has to offer. As one of the one of the best career outlooks currently, we really need to help inspire and attract these girls to that field. Unfortunately, there's less than 27% of women in tech, and that's abysmal. We really need to find a way to inspire them to let them know that the community supports them in these decisions. And really, we find that the middle school age is so critical. We have 10 to 14 year olds. There's data that says once they get to high school, that's when they kind of decide what they're into. So at this middle school age, if we don't have them excited about technology or think that it's just coding, then we've lost them, unfortunately. So we really want to start at that middle school age where they start to explore careers, try to get some positive relationships with the community members, and role models that could be a part of our program where they can envision themselves in these roles. So that's really more about our mission. We've been around for, this is our 12th year now, and we are national. So we started on the East Coast in the Philadelphia region, and we've been expanding more and more because there's such a high need for these types of programs. And I'm going to tell you all about how you can run your own program, which I'm super excited about. So I do have a video here. We're going to see if it works. I don't think we checked my audio video during the tech test. And I realized afterwards we could try it, but it does give a better explanation of what kind of impact and why we need tech roles. So we can try it. If it doesn't work, I can always send the link. It is on YouTube, but we're going to try it. So let's see. Because you did it. Yeah, it would depend on how your audio is going. Yeah, that's the thing. So we'll see. We'll try it out. You did. So are you able to hear the music? I guess we'll check that first when I was playing it. No, but I can do it from my screen. Let me see here. OK, yeah. Yeah, you want to. Yeah, it was not a problem. We can do this. I will because you sent me your slides ahead of time. Yay. Yes, three technical issues that may happen. So do I want to stop sharing and then you take over? Just hang on a second. I will do it. I'm just letting the video get through the ad. OK, perfect. All right. Yeah, I'm going to pull presenter control to my screen briefly and then I'll hit it right back. Yeah, thank you. All right, is it showing? That girl was important because as a young girl, I think what happened to me opting out of technology at a young age and then finding my way back happens to a lot of other girls. And I think a lot of that is a lack of role models. So being here gives them an environment where they can explore their hobbies and interests with other people that believe that they can do this. Technology touches everything that we do. And understanding how to leverage and live off of technology and develop things around it becomes so fundamental to the job earth and what we as individuals do really for society. Bringing more women to the ecosystem is going to be so fundamental and we want to make sure that happens. Tech girls that helped my daughter because of this exposed her to many of the opportunities in the technological field that I'm unaware of. And she does. I did not know about different types of jobs. So I think tech girls know only about the like a doctor. And I didn't see stuff like that. When I go to college, I want to be an animator in the shadings and look for pictures and share the equal and self. The reason why I support tech girls is for purely selfish reasons. Specifically, I feel there's a complete lack of women in games. As of last year in 2012, it was estimated to be about 70 plus billion dollar industry globally. And certainly there's a shameful lack of women in the industry. And this is my hope to try the least as a one person way to change that. I got really lucky to have a man who was able to pull me into technology, bring over computers, take them apart and all of that. But I feel like a lot of girls don't have that, which is where tech girls comes in. It gives them a chance to explore technologies that otherwise they wouldn't really have a chance to. I had some similar programs when I was in middle school that just were exposure to kind of technology, related subjects. But I would definitely love to have something as specific as this where you could really get to get your hands on real technology and actually be doing something. It's opened the entire world. She had access to a lot of different programs over the summer. So she did great in them, but she was always very self-conscious because she was the only girl. Having tech girls has been a way for her to meet other girls with similar interests, kind of to see if she's not alone. All right. Thank you so much for helping me out there. All right. So we will, I will switch back to you, Sarah. Give me your control again. Should see the pop up. You can show your screen. Yes, wonderful. And I mentioned while we're here, just if we had to do this little swap here, that afterwards when you get the archive recording on the page that has the link to our video of our show, we'll also be a link to the slide presentation that Sarah has here. So you will also have all of this info, the link to the YouTube video yourself as well. It's way wonderful. Thank you so much. And that video I think does a good job of giving you a little insight into the parents that may be bringing their girls to these events. It gives you insight into volunteers that work with our programs. And of course the girls. So it's really exciting to see their faces and the girls want to come to these events. It's just the matter of connecting with the right organizations and people that aren't also passionate about helping youth. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about our curriculum and how you can utilize our curriculum into creating a program. So like I said before, Tech Girls is really about more than code. We have various tech topic workshop in a workshop format that touch on designing your own mobile app. Girls can learn how to create their own game design and develop their own game. We have robotics. We have literally anything you can really think of because we're really trying to get girls to get excited about technology. Of course we have coding, but we really strive to expose girls to as many different topics as possible because they may go to one of the workshops and be like, that wasn't for me. But they may say, that's okay. Like at least you had that experience and now you know, right? But there's so many different topics that they can choose from that if there's another workshop topic that they probably haven't attended before, they can go to that one too. And they may be excited about podcasting or DJing or one of these other topics that we may have. So it's really important that we keep a really rambunctious, I guess? I don't know, robust curriculum as technology. I say rambunctious, but that's just me. I take either one. Yeah, rambunctious, robust topics because we are working with younger girls and we have to let them know that this could be possibly an avenue for them in the future, whether it's in a career or maybe it's more their passion. And they find that passion by attending these different topics and topics and workshops and camps. So as you can see, there's some pictures here. We are in-person and we are virtual, which is really exciting because we're able to reach such a large community base regardless of if they're in-person or virtual. And of course, we were able to pivot our curriculum during the pandemic to really ensure that we're still reaching girls. And what we noticed is there was a lot of girls we weren't reaching because they weren't able to physically go to these locations. So it's really exciting to see that balance and how we're still continuing to offer that virtual aspect. If organizations or companies are looking to host these events, they have that option. We have had some organizations that could support hybrid models. So we're really, really flexible to what fits through a library, what fits your community. And I thought that was interesting as well. And I'll explain how to run these programs in either format. So who can attend these workshops? We strive to reach any girl regardless of experience in fifth through eighth grade. So at these workshops or these camps that you may be running, you may have a fifth grader who has a lot of technical experience versus you may have an eighth grader that may not have a lot of technical experience. And it actually creates a really welcoming environment because the girls are going to end up teaching each other. So that type of collaboration is super, super helpful. You're going to have girls with different cultures, different backgrounds, and it really makes it exciting. And we are really striving to incorporate collaboration and inclusivity in our programs. And of course, we want to ensure that regardless of experience any middle school girl can attend. So I'm going to go over the curriculum and this is going to be where you're going to find the most important information and how to get started. So I've talked about our workshop plan. So this is really our bread and butter. We've been doing this for over 12 years. And you can see once I go through it how everything is lined up. What's really great about our curriculum also is that it's open to the public, meaning that you would create a free account on our website and you can access our workshop plans right there. So let me just click on this and we can go through our... I'm going to go to the website first and then I'll show you how to get to our curriculum. So one of the big things about tech girls is it's techgirlswithaz.org. We get a lot of people going to tech girls with an S so just keep that in mind. It's got a Z at the end. But when you go to our website this is really where you're going to find some information about us. About our current events that may be happening and I can show you that. We have a blog that really is exciting because we have a lot of teams that write blogs and interview people and give their insight. We have our volunteer spotlight blog which shows what it's like to volunteer and it's from the volunteer perspective and running program. So that's really cool to read as well. But I'm going to focus on the curriculum today. So you would go to techgirls.org and at the top you would click download curricula. Now the download curricula has a bunch of different things here. It has workshop plans. We do have camps that are about a built up. Some are already built out and some you kind of have to build out on your own. But along those lines we do have that option where a camp plan may be about a week to a week and a half of programming content versus a workshop plan which are standalone workshops on a topic. They usually run about two to three hours of in-person programming. Virtual programs we usually suggest that you cut it down to about two hours because again you are working with fifth through eighth grade girls. Now that about you sometimes being online I get really, really tired and we don't want to do that to the girls that are attending these events. So virtual we suggest about two hours if you're running it virtually. In person you can be flexible. So if you need to maybe the workshop plan is two to three hours normally some can last longer. Maybe your girls just need longer time on that topic. Maybe you really want to deep dive on it and take your time. You can always split it up into multiple sessions. It's really meant to be tailored for your community and your needs from the girls and how they're you know progressing throughout the content. But usually we suggest an in-person workshop is about standalone two to three hours of content. So that's how you would kind of plan out but again you can be flexible with your community needs. So if you need to do break it up into one hour sessions you can. It's really up to you. So let's go through the tech shops in a box. I do want to mention there are instructor difficulty levels. So I'm going to flat out say I had no tech experience beyond you know like Google Slides and maybe learning some like web design like on my own as I was a teacher and helping the kids learn technology but what's really great is I am myself. Obviously I've been with tech girls for a while now about four years and I will say when I first started I went to the basic levels of our workshops and since our workshop lesson plans are so step by step by step it's really funneling you information. So you're essentially teaching yourself before you teach the workshop similar to like any program or curriculum that you're following but I always suggest starting at the basic level. All of our workshop plans will include a detailed lesson plan a slideshow so you would use that slideshow to present and then any handouts or activities that may be needed will be in the actual workshop plan. It's also important to note that what do you need for these workshops? So the majority of our workshops require three things. So the first thing is Wi-Fi. The second thing is a projector so you can present the presentation and the third thing would be having Chromebooks or laptops for either each individual girl attending or you can partner them up if you have limited amount of computers or the girls can bring in their own laptop or Chromebook. And the reason why I say laptop or Chromebook is because a lot of schools will often loan a student maybe those materials so they can bring that in and with our workshops we really try to increase accessibility. So with that in mind we want to ensure that you're not downloading a bunch of things you don't have to purchase external hardware. Really all you need is to open up a browser for a lot of these programs that the girls will be using. So that makes it a lot more accessible no essential costs associated with most of our workshops so that way you can kind of pick and choose with ease based off having those three basic materials. And of course if you have experience and knowledge on some topics then check out the two level. The two level you might be like oh that's kind of scary I'm not sure about that. It's actually not terrible. There are some two level when I was first beginning that I was like oh I can do this this is super easy. Now advanced I will say you need to be comfortable with these ideas the languages and more the advanced ones increase external hardware usage. So I'll go through a couple of them and explain what I mean by that but really advanced you gotta know your material you gotta know your basics more than that than maybe your basic or intermediate levels. And by languages you're talking about like computer languages or Yeah so computer language or that topic language so for instance if I go down I'm just going to click on advanced if I'm teaching about engineering and roller coasters there is some very specific language about engineering in there and if I don't know anything it may be a little bit more difficult and I may trip up a little bit more versus if I go to basic oh you can code okay I know a little bit about coding you know I can click on this and see what it's all about but it's going to be more entry level versus the advanced I would say and intermediate is like you get more comfortable as you continue to maybe volunteer or you're just passionate about you know computer science and technology so you're kind of like ooh I already know this stuff it's really based off your experiences but that's kind of how they're labeled Yeah so let's start with designing mobile apps I'll do that one first so what you'll see is it will be leveled with the start indication it will say if this workshop is available virtually meaning yes we have adapted it and adjusted it to be taught virtually as well some of them may not have that so keep that in mind but all of them are ready to go for in-person so that's awesome as well so let's click on this and what's going to happen it will ask you to sign in now I'm a returning user so I'm already signed in but when you first look at this you'll see a new user and you'll just register and then that way you'll get an email and be like oh you're registered you can sign in and get your workshop plans now kind of thing if for some reason your account isn't working or if there's an issue you can always email us at info at techgirls.org and we will work on the back end and make sure that you are able to access our curriculum and try to figure out what's going on with your account so we always have that support lined up if you're having issues so once I click on a workshop it will just give me a brief introduction of what the students are going to be doing what are they going to be learning and any additional program that they'll be using but you really want to look at the workshop plan so workshop plans I'm a former teacher so when I look at this I'm like oh this is just like a lesson plan and if you're not a former teacher that's okay this will look very very similar to other curriculum you may have looked at before it's actually a really great representation of what curriculum should look like so that's super exciting to see this in all the workshops we'll have the same format so we're not changing anything up except for the topic the activities of course and the instruction materials but it will have the same format so you're not going to freak out by switching different topics and not not knowing what to look it's all in the same format I love that so much yeah that's safe so going through this the first thing we'll go over is the tech shop overview it will just give you a brief introduction of what this workshop is all about what's the experience some knowledge of design thinking we embed that so you can look at what is design thinking of course it's Wikipedia quick link hopefully if you want to just Google it that's fine too and then it tells you how long it'll take it will also give you objectives which is really important if you're trying to maybe get to persuade your library to run this program you can literally line line this up and be like hey in this workshop this is what our girls are going to learn so it creates more value to not only what like why like you're you're reasoning why you want to run it but here's what they're actually going to learn by the end of this let's see if I can check their learning what's also great is that there's a suggested assessment and all them so what should they be able to do by the end but this is your nuts and bolts of your lesson plan it's going to be a resource in the material section it will include the slide show for virtual and in person I do want to point out that sometimes our slides are different for virtual and they'll indicate it here but I do want to just kind of show you a little bit what this lesson plan not this lesson plan what this slide deck looks like so this current slide deck is set up for if you're running it virtually as well so it's a combined one so if you need to skip over some of these you can if you need you know I you would make a copy of this because you can't edit this I can because I'm staff so I can't edit it but the main one that you're getting will be you know you won't have edit access so you can make the copy of it just plain file make a copy and then you can kind of edit it as needed we suggest you keep about 75% of our content if you want to add things into the slideshow you can maybe you want to take this lesson plan and add some more of the actual instructions just to kind of keep you in order like hey this is the introduction piece okay this is my lesson plan okay this is the introduction piece I'll put that on my slideshow so I know that's the introduction piece so you can really manipulate it based off what works for you add slides remove slides that don't make sense but it's really giving you a great example of how we really want to empower those who are running our programs because we're giving you essentially all the materials and it's going to give you notes which I love so like if I'm presenting and I'm like wait sometimes you don't want to have your lesson plan out or your workshop plan out this way there's some notes that can help guide you as well so for instance this one on this step it has some things of what you should do for virtual and here are some things you should do for in person so always check the notes of the presentation slideshow there's some really great tips in here overall the presentation slideshow is just taking the workshop plan and putting it into a presentation there are some things that are not explicitly spelled out from the lesson plan into the slideshow so you always want to read the lesson workshop plan first I do want to make sure that you see the rest of the resource and materials so for instance this one uses a wire framing activity so you can oh that one I gotta fix that one see these things come up so this is good so our wire framing template needs to be fixed but usually you can go in here and it'll just bring it up you can print out our handouts and or you could just for this one I would say if you don't want like some libraries don't have the budget to just print out a bunch of you know templates you could just use scratch paper too so really making sure that you look at the resources first we always love when and we always ask that our participants use the survey so that we have that data because since we're a nonprofit we really get our funding and our donors from how many girls we're serving with our curriculum and then also that survey data lets us know instantly like what needs to be updated what needs to be changed what did the girls like what did they dislike you know that data is so so important because we want to make sure that we're putting curriculum out there that the girls enjoy if we need to update anything so we always ask after any program that you run to have the girls complete that survey and if you're not sure or you forget at the end of every slide presentation it always reminds you to please have them fill out the survey it is literally like a three-minute survey so it's not super long you know you can have the girls complete that they will get like a fun little certificate with their name on it so the girls love it but we want to make sure we're getting that important data so I'm not going to go through every step of this tech shop but each tech shop will have like a suggested of what you should do when the students arrive okay you know maybe you want to assign student teams in this one as I enter the classroom so that way they're ready to work in partners or in a group for the specific workshop that suggests that there's always an introduction section and we have icebreaker activities suggestions as well at the bottom of this workshop plan and then it gets right into the workshop so the workshop portion of the workshop plan goes into like the activities that you're doing so for the first part of this workshop we're brainstorming we're figuring out what you know what is really the reason behind developing an app what's the process of developing an app and then the girls get to experience designing the user experience so they will learn about user flow they'll learn about these different vocabulary concepts that aren't necessarily in our school systems that they're not necessarily seeing this so this is a great way to get that introductory level of design but they're still going to learn hands on so for this one they're going to start after they figure out their wire framing and figure out what that concept is of user experience and user flow then they're going to start figuring out what app they want to make which is really exciting to see they're going to create a prototype of their app it's all going to be drawn out before they get to using the program which is a marvel app so I talked about how we really strive to have just open up a browser and they're able to use that program some of these do require sign-in so just keep that in mind when you're doing prep work for your prep work for your workshop that you may want to you know make sure the girls have their marvel account when they come in because that way they are ready and set up for it and if they need help signing up you can show them how to sign up keep in mind that I didn't say this yet but tech girls will help promote your workshop so if you need help promoting your workshop we have a newsletter that goes out every couple weeks it is national we really strive to help our organizations if they need to boost up registration or get the name out there that they are I'm not partying I shouldn't say that formally that they are collaborating with us then we want to make sure that we help them with if they need their registration created we can do that for you if you need us to promote it we can do that for you so keep that in mind as you're thinking about your library and what you need that sometimes is helpful to have it listed on our website we can promote it on social media but a lot of libraries are like no we're good we'll just promote it our own program and our own events calendar it's really you know we're pretty flexible with that but we really do ask when you are utilizing our curriculum to always submit an event form which I'll talk about in a second just so we can keep record of all the events that are happening but I do want to go back to this workshop plan it will also usually require the girls to present what they made they spent all this time doing something in this workshop so we want to ensure that we give them confidence to speak publicly to feel confident in their basically their project that they made and then this is a really fun time to kind of share and show off what they made during this time we do usually have optional extension activities and then of course the closing so always going back to encouraging the students talking about how they can further understand maybe this topic and then we always have a take-up not always but sometimes we have a take-home activity they can do as well there's some additional notes so this is what I was talking about we ask that anyone utilizing our curriculum that they let us know that they're utilizing our curriculum the only not the only but the main reason our curriculum is free and open for anyone to use is because we are hoping that they will let us know and we were collaborating and that way we can really tell and report how many girls we are serving and that's our whole mission for our organization and then there's an instructor feedback form so this is really important like I said this link didn't work so as an instructor you can say hey this link didn't work you can always contact me directly if anything in the curriculum is not working before your workshop and we can try to figure out what's going on we'll send that to the curriculum team and make sure that gets updated and lastly I always suggest looking at the additional resources these get overlooked all the time but they have great videos sometimes handouts and additional principles of the concepts so for instance if you don't know iOS design that well or Android design then definitely check that out we have teaching tips so if you don't feel comfortable teaching here's some teaching tips if you need help with internet safety tips we have those and of course icebreakers listed because sometimes it's time to go looking up icebreaker activities I mean I do but some people don't before they start teaching and it's right there in a list and we created and curated that list for you so we really want to ensure that we create as much resources and as much purposeful materials for you when you are running your programs so that's a lot of information I know I just want to go over a little bit about our camp plans and what that looks like and also submitting your event when you are ready to utilize our curriculum so our camp plans like I briefly mentioned there's some here they're called tech camp in a box there are some already downloading go so these are three to five days you can click on it you can read more about it and they include agenda speaker notes and slideshows for each day and then you can customize your own camp so you can build out your own camp by combining workshop topics so I looked at all the workshop topics okay well I want to make a cyber security one all right so what would that kind of look like we list some of our workshops from our workshop curriculum that you can utilize and break it down it's really more at your own autonomy and making it more your own and then if you need extra help you can always hit more info and we would be happy to help in any way that you can we do have additional resources on here so how to run a tech pod that's a different program where it's more where you meet with the same group of girls for about five to six weeks and it's really you're running multiple workshops with the same group of girls similar to like a cohort so it gives more information about that a lot of people are more interested in how to run a workshop just a standalone workshop and then how to run a camp so there are some things on here that can definitely help you get started let's say I want to where is it I want to submit a program it's not on see it on here where is it well we do have a submit event a form so if you're interested in utilizing our curriculum you would utilize this form whether it's a workshop a camp or a tech pod and we suggest that you fill this out six to eight weeks in advance now the reason behind that is if you want us to help promote it we need to get the word out and of course we usually suggest for libraries to also promote it and ensure that we have enough time get enough registrants if we need to change strategy or you need help with marketing maybe you need a flyer maid we can help support you to try to entice the attendees to actually attend but it's pretty straightforward if you were to use a workshop of ours like I said designing mobile apps is this in person yes no let's just say yes do you want to change the workshop description here maybe there's something you want to add but really it's a straightforward event form that you would fill out if you're interested if you want us to use any hashtags where you located so we really ensure this is very thorough if you are running this in person and you want stickers we can send those to you the girls love our little tech girls stickers but this form goes directly to our team to ensure that we get notified when you're utilizing our curriculum whether it is public meaning that it's open to anyone or private which means that you just want it for a group maybe you have a Girl Scout group in your area that wants to do one of these programs and you want to run it privately just for them so you would still fill out this form regardless of if it's open to the public or maybe it's for a private group in your community and so just to clarify do you have to fill out that event form if you're doing an event or is it like optional just if you want to yeah so our event form is to communicate with us that you are utilizing our curriculum and it is required because that way we can keep records of you utilizing our curriculum how many girls you're serving who just need records of how many girls are serving if you don't want us to promote it or if you don't want us to do registration for you that way we can record those numbers for funding purposes to ensure that we can keep keeping keeping these curriculums free so yes that's in for fire and so we also do have a lot of libraries that are like super small and I know that some have asked like we can't like maybe we can't do a code club or we can't do something just with our organization but do you have like a format where we can work together with like the local region like maybe seven or eight libraries get together and I'll host virtually or I'll just like pick one spot to be able to host like yeah so that's a really good question as long as it's an organizational ran program regardless of which community members are being a part of volunteering as long as it's hosted like if it's a virtual program it needs to be hosted on all libraries organizational platform so when we are filling out that form it's very important that whoever is hosting it virtually or in person has that name it's just a legal thing so like since it's whoever holding that space to host minors would be legally responsible for that event if that makes sense okay um so that's kind of where it gets a little tricky but as long as we have that information and everyone is kosher with everyone volunteering and being part of that kind of format then you're good to go awesome yeah good question so I'm going to continue on with types of programs and I touched base upon this a little bit already how long are these workshops they're two to three hours of in person programming what does that include everything you can think of I hope if not more and it can be run in person or virtually so virtual programs these are about two hours and it can be run internally with your own program participants so let's say you have a tech club running already and you want to use one of our workshops for a program go ahead and do it that's that's an easy win for everyone right I always get the question what if we want it open to like the general public can anyone go does it have to be residents no it should be open to everyone of course in a library sometimes only serve maybe a few different towns or a few different cities so keep that in mind that if we post it on our website as intended there may be people driving or commuting from further than just your local city so keep that in mind internal programs like I said you can have your participants already and you can just utilize our curriculum maybe it's a drop-in program spice it up a little bit you can definitely utilize our programs as needed even if you're doing it internally we still ask that you submit that event form so we can keep track and I'll just be your contact for right now about communicating how many girls you served maybe some feedback of how it went any questions you may have if it is running internally and we'll go from there and we are very flexible so if you're like mmm what about this oh that doesn't fall under this category I'm not gonna do it reach out to us let us know maybe there's something that we haven't thought of before maybe there's a format that just works specifically for your community just let us know the worst thing we can say is no right so keep that in mind usually we're very very flexible to ensure that these programs are reaching girls so just reach out and we'll try to figure out maybe give you some feedback of what other programs have ran and what that kind of looked like and what success rate looked there and every community is different so we're very mindful implementation of our programs and how it may serve our participants and have you also run into any communities that say we love your curriculum we do want to reach girls but we also want to reach boys too like are we allowed to invite boys to these groups yeah that's a great question and I get that a lot the only thing is you can teach these programs to whoever you want us as an organization we can only record the numbers that are for 5th through 8th grade girls and if it is a program that is combined where it's boys and girls then we just can't promote it because it's not a tech girls you know just for girls program but we do ask that you still fill out that event form so that we know that you're utilizing our curriculum because you're like exciting we actually are in the process of an expansion right now so we are looking into like a middle school program based off our tech girl success we want to ensure that we are still inspiring youth especially the middle school age so even if you have a combined program there's just two caveats to that where we can't necessarily promote it but you can still utilize it and just record and tell us how many 5th through 8th grade girls you are served with that program yeah great question and we also ran into like kind of a murky question about what about like the non-binary and like other genders yeah that's a great question we do have policies on our participants which I will gladly share but if a student identifies as non-binary or no gender identity they can still attend if they are feeling comfortable in a maybe a more female dominated area so if they want to attend and they're that non-binary non-identifying student they are more than welcome to attend because I know everyone's like playing around with the right phrasing to use for that like is it a tech girls is it people who identify as a girl do you include non-binary and it's yeah yeah yeah we are the answer is yes so tech girls and participants who are non-identifying non-binary they are more than welcome to identify in our space and we welcome those communities that want to do so so that's great awesome yeah and we have some additional language we can support because we have had specifically a community in my region that asked that question and they were like how do we phrase this when we're doing recruiting we have that to support that type of language so just feel free to reach out and we can send that along as well and member earlier you did mention something about inclusivity and and as well so yeah yeah of course great questions so I know I have a few minutes left I do want to just touch base on some of these additional programs I talked about the tech camp so that's great I also just want to mention we have a national tech girls tech girls team advisory board which is girls in grade nine through 12th who want to also be a part of the tech girls mission they really help implement promote advocate for our tech girls programs and they are national and I'm the current advisor and we love supporting them in their tech journey so they may be doing different things they have specific goals that they want to reach at the beginning of the year and I help support them to reach those goals so if you know any team girls that are interested we always have applications open in the fall so keep that in mind I know a lot of the girls that are part of tab don't have that community unfortunately or that support locally so this is a great way to build friendships and also build confidence as they explore technology sweet so what's our impact kind of cool over 30 000 as of 2022 we always say for one tech girls volunteer at least five more girls get expired and 82 percent of our girls have changed their mind about a career in tech after attending a tech job so super exciting to hear that and see that I just want to mention that if you are running a tech girls program we usually suggest at one lead instructor maybe one to two teaching assistants and about 15 to 20 girls in a workshop you can have less you can have more it's really really flexible on how many girls can attend maybe your space is smaller maybe your space is bigger but really keeping that in mind now for virtual events we suggest we open it up to 30 girls because any virtual event as you know you get that drop-off rate so we may open a workshop to about 30 girls and you may get you know 10 maybe nine maybe 12 it really just kind of depends that virtual drop-off rate is a reality whether we want to accept it or not but that's okay so we always suggest that our virtual programs you have a more allotment of students regardless of maybe you know one lead instructor and wanted to teaching assistants so yeah that's kind of how that works and have you tracked any like the long-term stories like did you hear from any girls that said I graduated college I'm a software engineer now and yeah we have a couple narratives that we're currently working on we do keep a lot of our tab members of course like they started in 2007 I believe so a lot of our tab members now that started in that first group or on into their careers and they do we do touch base with them we're working on a couple narratives because we do get that question a lot I will say our last tab high school group I believe 10 out of it was either nine out of 10 of the graduating class going into college are in a STEM major so that's really exciting to see that data and we are we have a couple individuals we're working on the narratives to get that message out there but we are just now starting that data and collecting that but I thought that graduating class last year was like oh my gosh this is so cool since I was there last year too it's just really exciting and I actually had a couple tab members from last year talk to our current tab members this year about college and you know they're doing quite well in their CS program so yeah super exciting to hear I call that a win I know right for sure for sure so you know why run in this program really talking about have building and being a driving force for a diverse and gender balanced community demonstrating your support of women in tech in your community you don't have to be a woman yourself to run these programs you know it's showing that you support young girls in this type of field and they don't see that a lot fostering relationships and adding to the future women of technology super super beneficial I have you gotta love that I mean I would hope so but so who can help anyone so if you're in a library and you don't feel comfortable running it ask your local high school for teenagers that need volunteer hours talk to tech professionals in your community that maybe want to help volunteer and talk about their career talk to teachers maybe they have a passion for technology or helping girls and they don't really have that opportunity in the school system and parents parents that are very very helpful to help support whether they want to be a lead instructor a teaching assistant is always super helpful to have as well so anyone from ninth grade and up can help and support and how can you help start a tech girls program using our curriculum maybe it'll take a little bit to get some momentum that's okay I know a lot of libraries that start a new program they might get disheartened and not only one or two people came but you are still meeting those one or two girls that haven't been met before and that will really help inspire other girls to possibly join as well so reaching out to local schools reaching out of course to your library network letting them know these programs are happening that they're free they're engaging and their hands on encourage young girls to explore technology to sign up for our programs that are running right now and I don't think I did mention that but we do have programs running right now so if you go to our workshop our lessons or okay let me talk our website you will see we have virtual programs that any fifth through eighth grade girl can join you can see there's some in-person programs but you can see all the different things that are currently running by organizations that want to open it up to the public and companies that want to run these programs so I just want to mention that in case you know maybe you're not ready to start your own program we have opportunities out there already existing that you can steer fifth through eighth grade girls too as a resource yeah if you know someone is interested in that area or has mentioned something you'd say hey here's something free out there that might get you started exactly exactly and you don't know where that would go you know once they take a workshop they may be like oh this is really cool maybe I'll start my own top girls club at my when I get to high school or at my middle school so we love that our community I think that helps a lot of lives we always get this question and I'm sure I get it today how much time does it take on the library side to prepare and do and what do they you know because you know there's a lot of things you're doing already and another thing to do that they want to do but like how much time do they need to dedicate to it yeah that's a great question and I think you know we have programs that are running I usually say two months plan at least two months in advance to pick a topic I'm sorry from start to finish meaning from submitting your workshop to running your workshop about two months and it's not like really daunting in the sense that you have to look at that workshop plan every day you have to know it backwards and forwards like if you don't know something that's okay the girls learn from our role modeling right so we can work together and figure it out but two months in the sense that once you submit your workshop to our event form you have about two months before oh six to eight weeks before you actually did that workshop so maybe you know every week you go through the lesson plan for an hour hour and a half maybe you know maybe you need to set up some meetings with teaching assistants of course to prepare that's probably like two three hours total but you know if you are having trouble with maybe starting a program or running a program at your library because no one's interested I can do a small little like lunch and learn with your group meaning like we can set a time where you may be all in a physical location of people that are interested and I can present to them about what we're just talking about right now so our curriculum a little bit more some tips and tricks of running the program whether it's in person or virtual it's a little bit more tailored to your library's needs and the community members that might be leading it so that's an option as well if you're interested in doing like a 30 45 minute meeting with people that might be interested to help recruit them to get involved I can run that as well so we're definitely open to that because I know trying to get people involved can take some time so just kind of keeping that in mind and that's why tech girls is awesome that should have been my title that's why that's it just go on your way well I'm gonna add that to my next slide but I am done I know we're at time but I just want to say you know here are some next steps any questions we didn't get to today please email me ask neiman at comptia.org or you can info at techgirls.org and I will gladly answer any questions for you yeah thank you yeah if anybody does have any questions um yeah it's uh 11 o'clock by my clock but that's okay we started a little bit later after 10 and we don't get cut off just because we meet or it's 11 a.m if anybody does have any questions any last minute urgent questions you want to ask of Sarah go ahead and type into the questions section and we can definitely get them answered right now or of course as she said reach out to her later when you are maybe thinking about doing this in your library so I think this is a great resource definitely for for libraries I just for people wanting to girls wanting to attend those workshops that are available to anybody maybe get them started with those and they'll become so enamored with them that they'll come back to the library and say hey can we do one of these here yeah that would be wonderful yeah it will help if you you know since I had such a good time at the ones that I attended already let's do our own that's an ideal right that's that's the that's the ideal we do have libraries that have their own teen advisory boards too yeah definitely should reach out to and see hey hey kids do you all want to do this what do you think yeah yeah I love reaching out to the teens the teens really know their stuff they know way more than I do half the time I'm like okay that's great like I love it like and they're so creative as well and I will just mention that anytime these tech girls attendees go to these workshops and things they create and the ideas they come up with and they create it into life and they can show you it's just amazing like they want to be there and they're just so excited to be a part of something different and fun and yeah love the community support as well something like they those girls in the video mentioned something they never thought about before and this just gave them that you know little taste enough of the taste to realize this is the thing I can do yeah yeah and I wish I had this when I was younger and I've heard that many times so I wouldn't love this when I was younger I know yeah yeah I'm just like where was it yeah I went the English major route in college and whatnot but I always read and was interested in things like sci-fi and fantasy books and things and movies and those shows and but never enough there wasn't anything for me to jump to there was one I remember when I was in in high school there's like one computer programming class that was like right very basics and I took I thought it was so cool but then that was it after it wasn't anything beyond that and so you kind of got left hanging yeah okay that was fun but what do what else was there in high school to now it and yeah back there was not that option it's like my high school only had like the one comps I class two and it was it was all boys like it was all boys and there was like we did actually have that stigma in our high school that was like well this is for boys like this is a career for boys and this is what girls do and so my brother was in computer science and he's a software engineer now and it was just like it just wasn't what you do so I heart tech but I was an English major I'm all I'm talking with it now but yeah yeah because I'm a tech innovation librarian now you can always change how much you stuck in other we're doing right right talk is everywhere talk is literally everywhere and if we can bring those passions into a career that's ideal and that's kind of what we're trying to do so yeah and now I heart code yeah I heart code I love that I should get that on a t-shirt does code heart you though does code heart you back that's a hard part yeah sometimes yeah sometimes I miss a semicolon and it hates me for like an hour but yeah it's a great way for even people who are the experts yeah exactly yeah all right well it doesn't look any other questions came in right now while we were chatting that's okay I think we can wrap up for today thank you Sarah thank you Amanda for bringing Sarah on to talk about that this about tech girls today this is awesome I hope some of our libraries will reach out to you and we'll start getting some of these programs here in Nebraska or anywhere if any of our libraries do do this let us know so we can promote what you're doing and and share it everywhere awesome thank you so much and I look forward to collaborating in the future and yeah I hope you all have a wonderful and warm day it's very cold here good it's nice to have you here right now that's minor yeah all right so I'm gonna pull presenter control back we got some thank yous coming in on the on the chat now though thank you you're welcome thank you yeah thank you everybody for being here so I'm gonna pull back presenter control to my screen there we go and do my wrap up for today yeah there yes there we go all right so that will wrap it up for today's show thank you everybody for being here today we do I do have one last question for you Sarah I want to wrap up when we're done here so please do hold on until I'm done with my wrap up so yes so wrap up for today's show the show has been recorded it will be on our archive page if you go to our end compass live page over here these are our upcoming shows and the link to the archives is right under at the bottom here if you click on that it will bring you to our list most recent ones at the top of the page so today's show by the end of the day tomorrow at the latest should be ready as long as go to webinar and YouTube cooperate with me everyone who attended today's show and registered for today's show will receive a email from me letting you know when the recording is available and we'll have a link to of the YouTube video and the Sarah Slides as I said I've got her slides here the link to the video that she showed is in the slides so you will all have access to all of that when it comes up on here if you do want to search our archives for any other shows or any topics anything you've might want to know if you do show on we have a search feature here you can search the full show archives or just the most recent 12 months if you want something just very current that is because this has our full show archives going back to 2009 when Encompass Live premiered first premiered so we are in our 15th year of Encompass Live wow no idea when I started this that it it just goes so long but at least there's so many things to talk about with libraries always new and innovative wonderful things coming out so our full show archives are here so do just pay attention if you're watching the old show and I'm not going to scroll all the way down there is a original broadcast day and every single one of them so some of the shows we'll stay on the test of time still be good valid useful resources but some things will become old and outdated information may have changed drastically resources or websites may no longer exist or work people may work at totally different libraries at different places now so just pay attention that original broadcast day if you do watch something over we do for Encompass Live we have a Facebook page that we push information out too so you can keep it out there there's a reminder to log into today's show we do a little meet our speakers and we do also let people let you know here when recordings are available here's the announcement last week's and we also push out to Twitter and Instagram I believe with our hashtag and comp live a little abbreviation for the show so if you like to use any of those social media places you can do that there Amanda will be back with us on February 22nd that's the last Wednesday in February for whatever tech topic you have an idea for that hopefully we'll hear but that will be soon it is a good question yeah we'll see no rush got a whole month and you can so you can register for any of our other upcoming shows here one last thing I do want to mention it is the beginning of the year so we host as I mentioned this is our weekly one but our series Encompass Live but also here at the library commission we host the big talk from small libraries online conference this is always held the last Friday in February so it's on February 24th these are all small libraries are presenters all our presenters are from libraries with an FTE or population served of 10,000 or less the full schedule is available registration is available you can sign up so please do register share take a look at our schedule and our speakers you can see the topics we have coming up this year and you can register for the conference so please do sign up for big talk from small libraries coming up at the end of February big talk also has a Facebook page and its own Twitter account as well that you can follow what's going on there there it is but oh my gosh of course ah they updated our page okay no problem anyway we do meet the speaker things here on our page and announcements about what's going on when the schedule is available so if you do want to you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter for all of that so please do sign up for and big talk sign up for upcoming a couple of slides shows next week we're going to talk about taxes it's tax season yeah tax yeah but we have help taxing is going to be with us next week talking about ARP has a tax aid program here in Nebraska that I can yay yeah do that so please do sign up for that so that'll wrap it up for today's show thank you for being here thank you Amanda and Sarah and hopefully see you all at a future episode of income that's live bye bye