Chomping on chips and cheese curls, the 10-year-old girls had plopped onto a comfy leather sectional couch and were chatting about a coming trip – to a technoconference in Augusta.

It’s part of the talk these days at Studio 21, a newly opened digital lab in Rockland, where some innovative leaders are trying to move beyond the idea that digital technology is primarily the realm of a bunch of young males chomping on chips and cheese curls.

The lab is open to everybody, male or female, young or old.

“We’ll help you demystify the process,” said Vini Nair, 34, a co-founder of the interactive Web site Zoey’s Room and the nonprofit that runs it, called Platform Shoes Forum.

Zoey’s Room has targeted middle school girls. Research has shown that girls who become bored in traditional computer classes thrive when they are able to form social groups around a specific subject.

That logic can apply to others, too, young or old, and Platform Shoes Forum is trying to step up and out to meet that challenge.

In 2003, 24 Maine middle schools embraced Zoey’s Room, which revolves around a club that meets after school once a week with an adult leader. It allows the girls to develop computer skills and, more generally, their creativity.

Nair and Erin Reilly, 33, co-founder and executive director, decided to put Zoey’s Room under the Platform Shoes Forum. They recently added Studio 21, the digital laboratory. The organization operates through a variety of grants, donations and membership fees.

“We felt like we really weren’t getting out there,” Nair said.

“Our focus is children,” she said, “but we’re finding there’s a need for adults.”

Studio 21’s laboratory includes Macintosh iBooks, which are laptop computers, and personal computers for use in writing books, making music and movies, or working with digital camera images. It has digital cameras and video cameras, CD burners and editing stations.

Courses in computer use are available, including Web Site 101, for building personal Web sites.

“We kind of go where the interest is,” Nair said.

Zoey’s Room, however, is still girls-only.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, the focus was a group of fourth- to eighth-grade girls who showed up for 90 minutes of chatting online with nationwide members of Zoey’s Room, then offline with club leader Mary Bumiller, 36, of Rockland.

“It’s a secure chat room,” Bumiller said. User names and passwords are required to access Zoey’s Room, which includes ways of learning science, math and technology.

Tec-Treks, for example, takes girls 10 to 14, also known as “‘tweens and teens,” on a Web journey to solve technical problems. It is a vehicle for winning technology prizes, such as digital cameras and wireless mice by Logitech.

Nair said Zoey’s Room, which she and Reilly created, is the only character-driven Web site that features a multicultural character who personally chats online with girls every day after school. Members can chat from home computers or at the weekly gathering.

Early on in the session, the girls shift from computers to couches.

On a recent day, the girls chatted with Bumiller about a conference in Augusta where they would be able to meet women who have careers in math, science and technology, Bumiller said.

“And it’s girls-only,” she told them.

Next, Bumiller queried the girls on the types of math, science and technology that entered “your world last weekend.”

Fifth-grader Laura Swanson of Rockland said her family members talked about a house and garage they are going to have built, which will require lots of math in measuring building materials.

Back at the computers, the girls did their own thing.

While researching Bigfoot, fifth-grader Elizabeth Fletcher of Rockland found the creature is known by other names, too: Yeti, Almasti, Yeren and Yowie.

“I’m a figure skater,” fifth-grader Rose Hohfeld of Rockland said as she searched online for skating outfits.

Ten-year-old Lily Feltus of Rockland was on a Tec-Trek, designing and creating her own bedroom as she picked furnishings to be printed out for making a collage.

On another day, a different group might be making digital music with Lizzie Dickerson on computers.

Another program, which is working in collaboration with WRFR-LP, a community radio station in the area, teaches youths how to be disc jockeys. In the lab, they prerecorded a studio production, and they can learn live broadcasting at the radio station.

Platform Shoes Forum also has a program called x-Dream Challenge, which is a computer game for ‘tweens and teens who are overweight or at risk of becoming so. It is designed to teach them healthful eating habits and to be physically fit without letting their computers get dusty.

“We’re not done coming up with classes,” Dickerson said.

The goal now is to build more programs to fill Studio 21 throughout the day, Nair said.

She said organizers are trying to tap into alternative schools and ways to include other schools.

“We want to find ways to capitalize on this space,” she said.

To learn more about Platform Shoes Forum, Zoey’s Room or Studio 21, call 594-1842 or visit its Web site: www.platformshoes.org.