Girls allowed: Making STEM subjects gender free

At Iseult Mangan’s Co Mayo home, the weekend was spent digging a trench down the driveway for the arrival of broadband. We’re hoping to get it tomorrow. At this stage I’ll believe it when I see it, says the mum of four. Lack of broadband hasn’t stopped her only daughter, Aoibheann, 12, from creating four websites, three of which won national awards. Aoibheann was eight when she and a school friend made a farm safety website for children. She made another one at school as part of our Science curriculum and the others she made at Coderdojo, explains Iseult, who taught her daughter in one-teacher Cloghans Hill NS.
Aoibheann’s love for coding began in third class after Iseult did the Hour of Code with them – a one-hour intro to computer science, designed to demystify code. Aoibheann was a finalist recently in the 2019 FDM everywoman in Technology Awards - in the One to Watch category, presented to a girl aged 11-16 who’s actively encouraging girls to study STEM subjects at school-level.