A few weeks back a well done infographic came out highlighting the gender gap with girls in science and engineering.

While true and disheartening, Bots High highlights the little number – the small percentage of girls who study science in high school, build robots, and go off to major in engineering at MIT or Duke. Hopefully as more girls see other girls building robots, they’ll realize they can do it too.

So using some of the statistics, and finding some gems in old films, I put together some videos highlighting these statistics and countering it with footage of girls in action in Bots High.

The three are below. I hope you enjoy.

“Let’s Eliminate the Girls” – Women in Engineering

The Future 3 Women Engineers

These are the Girls Who Major in Science

Sources

Getting Acquainted with Engineering

nsf.gov/statistics/nsf96321/tables/sed11.xls

April, aka RoboMonth. Home to National Robotics Week and pretty much all the major robotics championship. Here’s a rough roundup of competitions across the country:

VEX World Championship
April 18-21 – Anaheim, CA
The championship for the robotics kit found in classrooms throughout the world.

RoboGames
April 20-22 – San Mateo, CA
The biggest fighting robot event around, along with other great robotics events.

FIRST Championship
April 25-28 – St. Louis, MO
Grand finale for Dean Kamen’s robotics event. Last years competition was featured on TV with Will.i.am.

USATL (BattleBots and BotsIQ)
April 27-29 – Miami Beach, FL
Can’t wait for Robogeddon? Check out the original fighting robots as the BattleBox makes its return to the STEM Tech Olympiad, for high school, college, and professional division battles.

This is where I’ll be, along with some of the teams from the film, some now battling in the college division.

Tune in tonight (or today, depending where you are) at 8:30 PM EST to watch the Q&A with cast and crew from the Miami screening for today’s Bots High worldwide screenings.

Tweet your questions to @botshigh.

And a new DVD page was launched. Check it out here. You can also get the film on Amazon!

Bots High will be playing at the DocuFest film festival in Atlanta this Thursday at 6 PM. More info here.

Larry Bock: Bots High Robotics Documentary – STEM, Gender Gaps, And Future Engineers In High School.

Check out the awesome article on Bots High in the Huffington Post!

Bots High will be playing in Tampa this weekend at the Independents’ Film Festival. It’ll be playing Saturday at 10 AM and an additional screening was just added for Friday at 4 PM. Myself and editor Andrew Hevia will be there, and possibly some people from the film. We’ll also be at the awards ceremony Saturday night where Bots High will get the Best Documentary award! Tickets available here.

Bots High takes place over the 2009-2010 school year. Unsurprisingly, the teams had a history before and after the time the film takes place (2011 Epilogue now in the DVD!). So to expand the scope and add some cool context and backstory to the Oct 6 screening day, I’ve been tracing the history of each team in the film each week in the newsletter.

So far we’ve heard about how Will from Ransom first built a robot in 6th grade, went up against a senior team, and won. Just now we explored freshman year of My Mechanical Romance’s Liz and Danielle, when they first get introduced to robotics.

I’m using Storify to compile this narrative, and updating as I release new stories via newsletter. But the newsletter goes more in depth with longer anecdotal stories.

So catch up and check out the history of the teams on the Storify page, and signup for the newsletter to get a weekly update about a team or robot in the film, leading up to October 6.

MAKE | Bots High Documentary Goes Inside World of High School Robot Builders.

Check out the latest Directors Notes podcast where I talk about the making of Bots High and other projects. Many thanks to MarBelle for the interview! I think his voice could work as a 1950s horror movie host.

Listen to the Interview

I’m working on the epilogue for the new DVD release and took a brake to show the bizarre, close proximity I am to what I’m editing.