Michelle Lange, a writer and designer living in Chicago, contributes to the Inspiring Success – Creating IT Futures blog. This article shares with us a recap for the What’s Inside a Computer? TechShop in a Box held in Chicago for the Girl Scouts. It discusses how the workshop has helped build the girls’ confidence and why STEM lessons matter. The full article was originally published November 07, 2017 on the Creating IT Futures blog.

Girl Scouts in Chicago played around with the colorful inner workings of computers on Saturday in a workshop that gave them language for the components, knowledge of how they work—and the confidence to put it all together.

“At the beginning, nobody was willing to volunteer to share what they knew,” said Diana Gonzales, who led the day’s TechShopz in a Box workshop, put on by Creating IT Futures. “By the time we were done it was like, ‘Hey, I have something to say,’ even the little ones.”

Gonzales is a tech teacher at Maria Saucedo Elementary, teaching kids how to code, make games and build websites. On Saturday, she worked with College of DuPage IT pro Deanna Cole and IT security expert Leigh Weber to introduce a classroom of Englewood Girl Scouts to the inner workings of desktop and laptop computers.

None of the 17 girls in fourth through eighth grade had ever seen the inside of a computer.

“By the time you’re out of here today, you’re going to know what’s inside a computer and how to put it back together again,” promised Gonzales.

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Two hours in, the Girl Scouts — who had never looked inside a computer before — were helping Gonzales make good on her promise.

“I love teaching people how to break things and put them back together again,” she said.