Building on ten years of research on gender and technology, EDC's Center for Children and Technology (CCT) has embarked on a three year, effort funded by the National Science Foundation to create Imagination Place in KAHooTZ!, an online design space crafted to involve girls and boys as shapers and makers of technology rather than merely users of it. Research over the years has shown that engaging in collaborative design projects helps girls establish different relationships to technological objects in their everyday lives. They begin to look around and think about the materials, design, intended uses and users, and other aspects of artifacts such as toys, appliances, computers and environments they live in. Imagination Place! is a space where girls can exercise their technological imagination.

The project draws on the expertise gained from two former National Science Foundation (NSF) projects that CCT created to offer alternative pathways for girls into engineering: Designing for Equity, a design-based software program and curriculum that encourage girls to conceptually tinker with technological design and Telementoring Young Women in Science, Engineering, and Computing, an online mentoring program that links high school girls to practicing female professionals for ongoing guidance and support. There have been rapid advances in networking technology since these projects were first funded by the NSF.