How could I pass up blogging for Ada Lovelace Day? I’m in a house full of girls who love technology, one of whom shares the initialism ALD as well.
Our alpha geek is, of course, Erin, who works for Teach for America from home. I poke fun at Erin by describing her job as “clicking” or being “technology firefighter,” and suggesting she’s never separated from her laptop. But the work she does is very cool: project management, instructional design, information architecture, web page updates and maintenance, multimedia production, and video editing… all with a virtual workplace. Lately she’s been learning Drupal. Given that we have two very energetic, busy girls, Erin hasn’t had a lot of time for personal technology projects lately (nor have I). But as the girls get older, I’m sure she’ll get back into making web, video, and other projects for our family, especially for travel.
Madelyn is second and catching up more and more every day. She reads very well, though sometimes she wants us to do it instead, and she prefers sight-reading (memorization) to sounding out words. Geek toys are among her favorites: Tinkertoys, workbooks, blocks, and things which involve doing, making, and motion. Madelyn knows how to use our Mac pretty well… maybe too well. She understands the basics of windows, icons, mouse, and pointer, and knows which applications do her favorite things: “The orange circle is for YouTube, Daddy. The Q is for movies.” She can plug in the track ball, switch users, and start playing videos. (Well, until I changed our last open account to be password protected.) She loves to type her name and delete it, type the whole alphabet, and watch videos on YouTube. In December 2007 I bought an XO thinking she’d use it; at a little older than two, that didn’t work. Now it’s time to update it and try again.
At only 16 months, Amelia (ALD) has limited ways to express her geek potential. But she’s already showed her colors: like her big sister, she LOVES books, Tinkertoys, and blocks. She’s as interested in playing with the computer as Madelyn was when she was little. And she loves to help us do things around the house: as true a sign of geekdom as there ever was. I expect Amelia to be as enthusiastic about technology as her mom and sister.
Happy Ada Lovelace Day to my grrl geeks, and to others everywhere!