Black Box Society
Today I want to introduce you to a world wide organization which teaches the younger generation to code. But before I do that, I want to explain why this is necessary in the first place.
Do you perhaps remember the old MSN Messenger or MySpace profiles? With those you could go crazy customizing everything to your likings. You had a lot of control with HTML, color codes, tags, etc. If you wanted to go "online", you had to open a program, dial in, listen to your modem make a bunch of weird noice and then be as fast as you can before your parents storm in the room to complain about the telephone line being busy. In short, we had to know about the technology we worked with in order to be able to work with it.
These days, technology became a sort of black box. Everything is already thought out for you. How much customization can you do on your iPhone, or Facebook profile? Virtually none at all. How much technological knowledge do you need to work an iPhone or Facebook? Not a lot, it all speaks for itself. This is resulting in a lack of general knowledge amongst the current youngsters.
Digital Society
You might think, "So? We clearly don't need it!". Well, I can understand your reaction, but you're a little bit off. The thing is, if you do not understand the technology you are working with, you also don't know the risks, pitfalls and consequences. Every parent teaches their children to look left-right-left before crossing the road, so children learn about the hazard and how to safely navigate through it. We are not doing this when it comes to the digital highway, simply because everything is already thought out for us.
Young people need to learn how today's technology works in order to be able to move around safely in this digital society. The biggest example I like to use to illustrate this is The Snappening back in 2014. Snapchat pictures (13.6GB) got stolen and posted online. While this is one thing when it happens to celebreties, bare in mind that 50% of Snapchat's user base ARE MINORS. I'll let that sink in for a bit...
You got it, with ages 13 to 18 that is a hell of a lot potential child pornography, considering those ages are perfectly healthy to be exploring sexuality. However, I do want to be clear that we can not and should not put any blame on the youth. They simply believed their pictures would be safe ("It destroys after 10 seconds, right?"). If these kids knew how the technology worked, they would've had better means of assessing the risks themselves.
On top of this, think about online shopping with credit card details, online banking, etc. There is a lot of risky stuff in our digital society which can make you a very easy target if you do not have some basic knowledge!
Creative Society
Finally there is the creative part, the fun part! Where you used to be creative in school with some pencils and paper, or a pair of scissors and glue, you can now also be creative in the digital world. Why not create an animation of your coolest phantasy, or create a website about your awesome hobby? Personally I once created a very simple but fun birthday app for my girlfriend which I secretly installed on her phone (yup, she should've known how to better protect her phone from such invasion 😎). The possibilities are endless!
With creativity we also touch on the buzzword "Computational Thinking". In almost every branch ICT has made it's entrance. And even outside of ICT, problems (or "challenges" if you are born after 1990) will always arise and need solving. By learning how to break this down in smaller pieces, solve those pieces and put it all together you can learn to systematically solve this with a certain way of thinking. A programmers way of thinking if you will. This skill can help you in many aspects of your life, not just technology!
But It Is Not Taught In Schools?
True, it is very hard to get this integrated in school curriculums. This is mainly due to a shortage of teachers with the right amount of technological knowledge and the speed at which technology develops. Though in a lot of countries good progress is being made, there is a great demand for this still.
This is why CoderDojo exists. CoderDojo is a free volunteer led coding club which operates world wide! At a dojo kids of ages 7 to 17 can come in on a monthly basis and be taught by mentors and other children in different aspects of programming. Children get to meet likeminded kids their own age ánd learn about technology. This happens in a non-curriculum based manner. It is best compared to "makerspaces" where people will just be creating stuff making it up as they go and helping each other out wherever they can. CoderDojo provides the basics and guides these kids through their adventure!
--> Join your local dojo at www.coderdojo.com! <--
Do you have children? Are they being taught about technology? Are you confident they will have the skills to safely operate in a digital society and have good job guarantees? Let me know in the comments!
In case you are wondering who I am, feel free to give my #introduceyourself a read :).
great post, thanks for sharing!
You're welcome @BigBigToe! Feel free to follow me for more posts about this :).
Kids who are faced to coding early may find it as an intellectual game which fascinates them, they may create amazing things because they perceive it as a puzzle and not as work ^^
Please check my new post, I think you will like it!
@paps
This is shared, children are the future and technology is already here. Teach the children well comes to mind the world needs more people sharing knowledge @seersalomon
Thanks @joanstewart! Besides the serious side of it all it is also a hell of a lot fun to be working with these kids in such a way 😎
@seersalomon Thanks for sharing :-)
I am following
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@seersalomon I've recognized that when it appears to be like terrible, just stepping absent for your moment would make all the primary difference on the earth.
The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Great post. Self sufficiency is of utmost importance. Teaching our children is one thing, but there are also millions of us adults who have time constraints via employment but know zilch about coding. Is there a resource for the rest of us?
You are very right about this @citizenzero! For adults I would advise sites like khanacademy, codecademy etc. Which have a lot of coding tutorials! Also keep an eye on the next web deals, they often have cheap online course packages as well. And if you want to hard mode, pick a language (for web you can give ruby, php or python a try) and just go through the documentation of that language and google for getting started tutorials. I hope this can help you out :)
Thank you @seersalomon.
It is all about Tech these days, so when the kids are introduced to it, let them learn something valuable
As a matter of fact, in The Netherlands we are working on a collaboration with Unicef to combine learning about children's rights and technology together in 1 event :-)
I taught a variety of workshops at a computer camp this passed summer to kids from ages 8-17 how to code, design and model. The next generation are a natural at this much like current millennials as all of this is the equivalent of playing video games. Instead of having your kids mindlessly waste time playing them have them create it. Just as the article says in the coming future creativity will become one of the most valuable skills as automation takes over many of the tedious work. At least this way they get their gaming fix in while doing something productive that will last for a lifetime in the digital world. I'm a huge advocate for software development especially with augmented reality and the fusion of them to promote an immerse level of education. I plan to write a blog about it in the future. Great post! @seersalomon
Thanks @druidcruize! Seems like we are very mutch on the same page :) May I ask at which coding camp you were teachi g? Just out of curiosity :) will keep an eye on your blog!
emagination Computer camps, check them out!
i DO see the value of teaching kids how to code.. BUt also i do wonder if we should protect children from it until they are around 12 years old.. so they can spend their time developing normal and healthy relationships etc..
You make a very valid point here. At younger ages its not so much about learning to program, but learning computational thinking. We have also done an "unplugged" event where the kids would be outside in groups doing all sorts of physical games which all stimulate this. I will write up a post about this soon :).
Please also bear in mind that at clubs such as CoderDojo, kids meet other likeminded kids and develop relationships there as well. At my dojo for example 2 guys met for the first time and now they are best friends and make money with a minecraft server they built themselves!
That's cool. Makes sense to prepare our next generation to be ready for new technologies. :)
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STOPIt's a beautiful post. Thank you. :)
You're welcome!
This is awesome i have bveen looking for something like this... my son really wants to learn but me not really knowing much can't help i want to put him classes
Great! I'm glad I could help :) If you ever have any questions about CoderDojo let me know and I can at the very least get you in touch with the right people for your area 😎
Happy Coding!
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STOPThanks for your great article. I so wish I could get my kids interested in coding. They love technology, but none of the 3 have any desire to learn to code. My middle child is in her second year in college, and I tried to get her to take a computer science class, of ANYTHING IT, but she just wasn't interested.
That's too bad! There are some very inspirational young ones out there. Even girls who started things like their own fashion blog, or youtube channel etc. I sure hope it will turn around for them at some point :)
I believe I'll eventually get them interested. Maybe it'll take a bribe. lol
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Very interesting project there can never be enough of this.
There are many more projects like this! Though CoderDojo is probably the biggest. But there is also CodeClub, railsgirls, etc. 😎 Should you have questions, let me know!
Awesome! Thanks for your support :)