After reading the first few posts for th…
After reading the first few posts for this week’s task, I was thinking are there any females that are the founders of learning technology ventures? I have found one that I will report on later this week but I thought this article might be of interest to some:
The Face of Success, Part 2: Where Are All the Female Tech Geniuses?
http://www.inc.com/vivek-wadhwa/where-are-all-the-female-tech-geniuses.html
Posted in: General
jenbarker 4:14 pm on September 25, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Jenny ~ Interesting that you bring this up. I explored Design2Learn and I too was surprised that their leadership team consists of all males except for one.
melissaayers 10:30 am on September 29, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks for sharing that Jenny – it was a really interesting article. I hope this is a trend that will change in the future as I am sure when we look at the education domain that statics would indicate there are more female educators than male I would imagine.
David Vogt 8:14 am on September 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Jenny –
Thanks for opening this question, and for presenting a great example of a female entrepreneur in the Founder’s Parade.
As the article points out, there are some obvious historical reasons for why there are still fewer women championing tech start-ups. I won’t dwell there because I’ll just end up saying some unfortunate things about immature male-dominated cultures.
What I will say, in context of this week’s discussion, is that an entrepreneur is typically someone who is brave enough to go where few have gone before, to see an opportunity in a wilderness. An entrepreneurial woman won’t be daunted in a wilderness of men – she’ll actually see this as an advantage because she has innate tools and perspectives that are lacking in the ecosystem.
This is particularly true with learning technologies, which can be characterized as the awkwardly opportunistic marriage of an engineering culture with an education culture. It isn’t so much that the cultures are actively antagonistic as they are simply far apart. All the best opportunities are in that wilderness in between. Be brave – march in!
David
Jenny Brown 8:53 am on October 12, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thanks David. This course is great opportunity to entertain the idea of marching right in! At the moment I seem to be tiptoeing back and forth. Prior to this course, my thoughts were only really related to coming up with and implementing small creative ideas at my workplace so this shift in mindset is taking some time.
teacherben 5:24 pm on October 12, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Here are 15 women with successful start-ups:
http://www.inc.com/ss/christina-desmarais/15-women-watch-tech-startups.html#11