BrainCake : Can*TEEN

The Big Idea:

Can*TEEN is a kit focused on girls 9 – 14 that is built to connect girls to science in a way that captures their imagination and cultivates their long-term interest in science as a career. Can*TEEN puts girls in touch with resources, mentors, curriculum and each other. Can*TEEN inspire girls’ choices, helping them see science as a potential career and the way to make a difference in our world.

Based on “navigating through STEM fields”, the kit has physical and electronic resources as well as “action projects”; a planned social web component will also coordinate with the kit, rolling out over all of 2009 with monthly projects. Each STEM discipline has two girls associated with it as guides; these girls are both inspirational for toolkit users as well as practical…they feel real and approachable. Each guide has a detailed profile that can be explored by any girl at any time using multiple access points…everything from interests (one girl likes soccer, another architecture, another is consumed with lowering her carbon footprint), to engaging women mentors, innovative websites and learning styles based on Gardner’s multiple intelligences.

On the Web:
Beginning in May 2009 and each month after, the Can*TEEN website will unveil a new project, lead by each of the eight individual girl navigation guides profiled in the kit. (e.g. Tia likes music and technology, Maddie is into math, Samara is our resident environmentalist.) The guides will urge girls to group think on problems, sharing what’s working in their part of the world, proposing new solutions in a transparent and highly social process.

The kit contains:
The kit’s contains four CD’s loaded with resources for each discipline – Science, Technology, Engineeing, Math – guided by Can*TEEN girls, a timeline and poster of Great Female Difference Makers, a periodic table of elements, a calculator rule, a journal, a backpack, experiments and science activities, amazing links to software, videos, homework help, career choices and more.

BUY NOW

Live in the Pittsburgh area? Check out your local library's teen section to see our new Can*TEEN Library Kit, made possible in partnership with the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and with funding from the Jewish Women's Foundation of Greater Pittsburgh!