“The Adventures Of Josie True” Will Take Girls Online Into A Colorful, Multiethnic Educational Playground

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- With an assist from the National Science Foundation, an assistant professor of media study at the University at Buffalo is launching a unique software game that addresses the lack of computer educational activities oriented toward girls, particularly those from underrepresented groups.

Mary Flanagan has received a $199,920 NSF grant to get "The Adventures of Josie True," up and running on the Internet, where kids will be able to play it free of charge. If funding permits, she hopes to make Josie True available on CD-ROM for less than $10 for schools or homes without an Internet connection.

The game is designed to attract young women, particularly girls of color, to computer-learning activities that are fun, challenging and full of characters from their own lives, neighborhoods and cultural histories. "The Adventures of Josie True" Web site is at http://www.josietrue.com.

The eponymous "Josie" is a frisky, computer-designed, 5'1," 11 year-old Chinese-American fourth-grader who's as online as she wants to be. With her black hair dancing and arms akimbo, she looks like she bolted straight out of Japanese anime to battle Mothra. And in one sense, she has.

"Believe it or not," says Flanagan, "most of the thousands of educational computer games on the market are designed and packaged to appeal to white kids, with the majority of games created in a boys' 'aesthetic.' It's one way girls are being shut out of computer technology.

"Rarely does a game feature a principal character of a non-white race or ethnicity," Flanagan says. "While some may argue that Barbie games are getting girls online, we need to ask ourselves, 'Just what is it that Barbie games teach kids? Who or what does she represent in the minds of the players?'

"I hope to help girls, especially underrepresented girls, embrace computer technology as a tool for play, study and all sorts of creative enterprises," Flanagan says.

Josie games are very entertaining, but that's not all. They also are designed to reinforce specific lessons in the middle-school social-studies, science and math curriculums. They introduce historical characters in their own, historically accurate milieu -- characters who not only are accomplished and fascinating in their own right, but who serve as great role models for girls.

Josie's family members, teachers, neighbors and friends all have personas, personalities, histories, talents and problems of their own that help children identify with real-life issues like divorce, sibling rivalry, jealousy, the inevitability of failure and the wonder and joy of accomplishment.

Josie has been in the works for almost two years, but Flanagan's teaching responsibilities, limited funding and her work with kids in a hands-on Saturday computer technology program she recently organized for Buffalo urban girls, have kept Flanagan and her students from working on the project full-time.

"We really needed an infusion of funds, not only to develop the games without interruption," she says, "but to get them up on the Internet so girls could access them for free." The NSF agreed.

"The American Association of University Women produced a report a few years ago that pointed to gender gaps in our schools that short-change our girls," Flanagan says. "It reported that schools fail to engage girls in computer activities -- and even if the girls learn to operate the hardware, the AAUW report claimed that schools don't have the time to teach girls how to use this technology to solve problems, learn and have fun.

"The report maintains that this fact goes a long way to explain why girls fail to keep up in science and math during their adolescent years," she adds.

To aggravate the situation, she says, the software industry plays it safe when marketing technology to kids.

"They pitch computer software and hardware to the proven market - those children who already have the means to buy it and use it," says Flanagan.

She points out that commercial educational games are marketed to households with incomes of $75,000 or more and that children in those households nearly always have ready access to computers.

"There is a steadily growing number of households with computers in the African-American, East and West Indian, Asian and Latino communities, and the children in those households have computers and play computer games," Flanagan says.

"But marketing professionals still aim their messages at the largest group of users with the highest incomes, and that group is composed of white children who are, most frequently, boys.

"What kind of material is out there for parents and educators who want to offer young girls learning experiences that promote diversity?" she asks. "Not much."

Flanagan says past experience in the software field made her realize that public funding is absolutely necessary to provoke interest in the new technologies among girls, and particularly among girls of color.

"When a project has non-commercial funding, Flanagan notes, "It can take the kind of risks in the design and marketing arena that commercial producers will not take."

Like many educators, Flanagan insists that if the information revolution is to include people of all economic classes, races and ethnicities, computer material must excite the interest of the children who are now being ignored.

In the first Josie True adventure game, our heroine's science teacher, Ms. Trombone -- who also is an inventor -- vanishes. Josie sets off to find her. Her search eventually takes her to Chicago of the 1920s and to Paris, where Bessie Coleman, the first African-American aviatrix, offers assistance to Josie and the players.

Flanagan explains that Coleman, who came along several years before Amelia Earhart, was a young woman of unusual intelligence, talent and determination -- a fine role model for any girl.

"When racial discrimination denied Coleman the right to procure a pilot's license in this country," she says, "she was unbowed. She went to France as a very young woman, where she trained and began her flying career."

To complete the search for the science teacher, players must navigate 14 smaller games that use principles of math, science and history to produce the clues that facilitate their journey.

Flanagan says some of the games' characters will speak language used by today's pre-adolescent girls -- language tested among urban and suburban students. Other characters will employ speech patterns and vocabulary appropriate to the historical period in which they lived.

The games will use tools familiar to players as well. One mini-game, for instance, requires that players build a simple machine cart to get them to Bessie Coleman's airfield. Another mini-game refers to Bessie Coleman's true-life stint as the manager of a chili parlor. It requires players to use their knowledge of fractions to figure out how much chili to deliver to each customer.

Flanagan says future Josie True episodes are being planned. Like the first one, they will be available online and, if funding permits, available on CD for schools or homes without an Internet connection for less than $10.

One future episode will delve into the world of Hildegarde of Bingen, the brilliant and prolific medieval German abbess and mystic who wrote music and studied medicine and mathematics. Another game will visit the palace of Hatshepsut, Egypt's only female pharaoh. Other role models on the list include Wilma Mankiller, the first woman principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, and Chinese Empress Si Ling Chi, the inventor of silk.

"If we, as a society, promote the concentration of technological knowledge and its power in the hands and heads of those who, by virtue of their race and economic class, already have it, we're making a big mistake," Flanagan insists.

"Computer knowledge is essential for every child today," she says. "Educational games give us a variety of tools to teach computer skills and help kids gain access to hundreds of educational opportunities in many disciplines."

Flanagan says she hopes that "The Adventures of Josie True" is just the first of many computer games to use the interests of pre-adolescent girls to propel them into the 21st century armed with the tools necessary to navigate the immense field of knowledge open to them via educational technology.

"If we continue to rely on the marketplace to direct access to computer technology, we are denying equal access to girls, the poor and working classes and to people of color," she says. "In doing that, we continue to rob ourselves of the intellectual and creative talents of the majority of our population. How smart is that?"