TechCrunch published an interesting interview with Laura Weidman Powers, one of the founders of CODE2040, a non-profit working to match:

high performing black and latino undergraduate and graduate software engineering students with Silicon Valley start-ups for summer internships, and also provides them with the insight, networks and support to ensure their successful participation in the high tech innovation economy.

According to the interview, the two main issues the organization sets out to address are the lack of awareness for these students about careers in tech and the lack of access to networking opportunities that may help them enter these fields.… more

By Amalia Deloney, The Center for Media Justice If you’re like most people, you probably have no idea how fast the data access is on your smartphone.  Or, you may have an idea—but its largely informed by what the carriers and advertisements tell you. But can we count on that?  Now, the FCC wants to know.  On Wednesday, the FCC announced it has plans to“measure the performance of wireless broadband services across the country” in a program called Measuring Mobile America.  Cute.… more

Super Wi-Fi is a type of wireless Internet signal that is able to reach a much wider area than traditional wireless signals. This technology is currently being deployed in the U.S. using “white spaces,” or unused broadcast television spectrum. This wireless broadband can travel up to hundreds of miles, but in daily life it would probably be closer a to few miles, blowing a few hundred meters with regular Wi-Fi out of the water. Technology like this has a lot of people excited, according to The Raw Story:

This could provide high-speed Internet to sparsely populated rural areas which lack broadband.

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Jean Rockford Aguilar-Valdez is a doctoral student studying equity in science education and a former science teacher. She’s been doing research at a high school in North Carolina with a 15% Latino population, discovering that often what prevents Latinos from entering STEM are issues that have little to do with how hard science can be. A big chunk of the students came out to Aguilar-Valdez as undocumented, and even though they are interested in science, they are unsure about their path to education.… more

A great graphic from LearnStuff shows how integrated technology is into the lives of young folks. Although only 11% of kids aged 2-5 can tie their shoes, 70% can use a mouse, for example. There are many other examples in the graphic below, check it out. Thanks to LearnStuff for sharing.… more

By Clarissa Ramon, Public Knowledge A recent  survey of adults who use their cell phones to access the Internet found that two in five Latinos and half of African Americans — double the rate of Whites — conduct a majority or all of their web browsing via their cell phones. While smart phones enable communities to cross over the traditional digital divide and become Internet users, they are not perfect solutions. Data caps have the potential to restrict how and when Internet users go online.… more

Where are all the women in tech? It’s a simple question with a complicated answer. A recent report tried to answer the question, especially given as we wrote recently, that even when girls are interested in STEM they aren’t likely to pursue it as a career. Nationally, according to the report, just 25% of computer and information technology jobs are held by women. When it comes to supervisory roles, at the top of the corporate ladder, this percentage drops to 20%. Which is to say, the numbers aren’t very promising — especially when you factor in race: Asian women make up 4% of the workforce, African American women 3% and Latinas just 1%.… more

Más Wired is working on getting a panel at next year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) tech conference in Austin, Texas, and you can help us get there. As a matter of fact, you can help get more Latinos to the SXSW conference in general. With the help of Armando Rayo of Cultural Strategies, who compiled the list of Latino panels and panelists below, you can vote for Latinos to have a bigger presence at SXSW in 2013. Voting began on Monday and there are 3,200 proposals up for a vote right now.… more

The Latino & African-American High School Internship Program at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in California allows young students the chance to do original research in the hospital’s labs. According to the LA Times:

Under the watch of professionals, they conduct their own research in the hospital’s laboratories. A pair of students have spent weeks conducting research on bacterial meningitis among infants; others have studied cancer and HIV.

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There was a really cool profile of a Latina engineer in STEMinist this week, Luz Rivas currently works as an engineering educator at Iridescent. She first became interested in technology in school when she came into contact with a Apple IIe computer. She said that it’s important for children to be informed about STEM and to encourage them to pursue these fields:

It’s important for kids to know about cutting-edge science research. I think kids should be aware that science is not a set of facts and that people are working on answering scientific questions and developing new technologies, sometimes in their own neighborhoods.

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