In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a big advocate for getting girls interested in STEM. So I’m always on the lookout for new projects, organisation or products that aim to fulfill this gender gap in the stem industry.
When I was younger there was nothing like this to get me interested in stem, it was my dad and my older brother that made me curious. Not all girls have this opportunity. Recently while I was looking at the madewithcode.com youtube (another amazing intiative to make girls interested in STEM) I came across jewelbots.
What is jewelbots you ask? Well they're wearable friendship bracelets that allow girls (and boys) to code messages to send over bluetooth to their friends jewelbots bracelets on their computer or smartphone. The most exciting thing about these bracelets is that they’re opensource, so you and I can code our own messages outside of the app using an arduino IDE so the bracelets can alert us when someone tweets or when we have to leave for school.
The company was co-founded by Sara Chipps and Brooke Moreland, both women who are heavily involved in tech and fashion. Their goal: to create killer, customisable wearable jewellery to thrill tweens and teenage girls to dramatically increase the number of girls going into STEM fields.
Sara Chipps is no stranger to the STEM field, she formerly was CTO of Flatiron school and founded Girl Develop it! in 2010 and taught over 17,000 women how to code. Brooke Moreland founded the photo-sharing fashion app, Fashism in 2009 and went on to become the general manager of Fashion GPS.
The bracelets are currently in the development stage but are scheduled to ship out the first batch Spring 2016.