FERNDALE – Diva Tech Talk and Inforum return to M2 (Squared) TechTalk on Monday April 11 from 3 to 4 pm with special guests Monica Wheat of Digerati Girls and Julia Winter of game maker Alchemie. The show can be heard live on the Podcast Detroit Network.

Kathleen Norton-Schock, from Diva Tech Talk, will be joining us with special guest:  Monica Wheat, multitalented tech entrepreneur and founder.  Among other things, they will be discussing Monica’s nonprofit which encourages girls to learn tech skills (Digerati Girls),  Monica’s involvement in Detroit StartUp Weekend (May 2016),  and Monica’s newest venture: clevr.  Throughout the discussion, there will be words of wisdom for female technologists, nonprofit activists, and women entrepreneurs.

Rachele Downs from Inforum will interview Julia Winter CEO, founder at Alchemie, which builds mobile games for higher education, beginning with a huge pain point, organic chemistry. This class stands in the path of students wanting to progress in careers in medicine, engineering, and science, with its 40 percent fail rate. The spatial understanding required for success in organic chemistry is not readily accessible via traditional textbook and lecture delivery systems.

With pressure to increase student retention, higher education institutions cannot allow organic chemistry to continue to be the roadblock to pre-professional students. Legacy textbook publishers have seen sales decrease due to competition from re-sellers and the multitude of other academic resources. All three of these groups, students, universities, and publishers, are affected by the difficulty of not only passing, but excelling, in organic chemistry.

Alchemie is putting a new method of learning, literally, into students’ hands by creating mobile puzzle games for organic chemistry. Players can practice the spatial ideas of organic chemistry to develop the intuitive skills necessary for success.

M2 TechCast can be heard at live at www.podcastdetroit.com. Archives of previous shows can be heard at http://www.podcastdetroit.com/artist/mi-tech-cast/