Sally Ride Toys With Engineering: Astronaut Sally Ride is challenging middle-schoolers to think like engineers by designing a toy for a competition called ToyChallenge. In the process, she hopes to encourage more girls to pursue careers in the field. "We need to impress upon girls that engineering is creativity, it's curiosity, it's common sense and it's cool stuff," said Ride, who was the first American woman to blast off into space. "It's not just geeks with pocket protectors." [...] Nevertheless, encouraging girls to pursue science careers is essential because "we need to take advantage of all the talent our country has to offer. "If you look around at the technical workforce, only 9 percent of engineers are women, still," she said. "We need to get a lot closer to 50 percent."

Not that there's anything wrong with geeks with pocket protectors.

It will be interesting to see if this particular approach works. It may encourage kids to see engineering problems in a different light. I suppose it depends on how clearly you can make the connection between engineering and toy design without belaboring your point, and without making toy design seem ... not fun, for lack of a better word.