My daughter hacking
I have been hammering the notion of Software development for as long as I can remember. I took up Computer Science when I was 14, it was just fun to do but I was never that good in programming what I was really good at was Strategizing on what computing could do to our lives. I stuck to Software through out my career, understanding how computers and software works in a global network is a life skill. Here is a video explaining why this is important to get our kids involved in this exercise.
Kids hacking RasberryPi and GreenQloud
I have had arguments with my wife about the utter lack of understanding in my daughters school on what they should be teaching them about computers. Wait for it… WORD!!! yes, they are teaching my daughter how to use WORD! arrg…the humanity! I still cannot contain my frustration. We don’t want our kids to be consumers of software, we want them to be creators and innovators and problem solvers. I am on a mission to get the power of cloud computing to every class room in Iceland. The video is aptly named “What they don’t teach in schools” and that is computer programming. It is understandable but sad. Teachers could learn something from the kids now a days. No teacher that I have met has taken the initiative to understand how the world of software works and included it in the curriculum. That is why I believe Entrepreneurs will solve this problem. I have written about Skema a startup that is teaching kids especially girls about computers and software. I believe this is the future, everything we do is going to involve computers or software or machine language. I urge you to allow your kids to learn this skill, they will thank you for it. The great programmers of the future are going to be the Rock Stars. I am buying a cool computer for my daughter soon, she is every interested and has taken a number of classes with Skema.
Related articles
- John Pavley: Everyone Should Experience the Joy of Coding (huffingtonpost.com)
- NYC to teach computer science and software engineering in 20 schools (computinged.wordpress.com)
- Mayor Bloomberg Announces Pilot Software Engineering Program for NYC Schools #nycmfg (adafruit.com)
- Code.org Lets Silicon Valley Heroes (and will.i.am) Explain the Value of Teaching Kids Computer Programming (Video PSA) (technologytell.com)
Bala – I understand your frustration – Totally agree with you the schools should us the software from Skema. Due to lack of money to upgrade the computers used in school it´s grate idea to move the IT teaching to the cloud – the schools could then still use the old HW for some years to come by using SaS service on the Cloud.
Back to “WORD” – Some years ago my son was handing in is essay and was using OpenOffice on his new computer. He asked me if he could have $Word$ on his computer because he was not able to send in his essay on OpenOffice format. The teacher told him he was not able to read the essay because he was using Word !!
As we know the schools could save some money on MS software if they would us open source software. The government need to make this there policy to use open source software and we need to educate/inform the teachers about the endless possibilities available in IT now and the need to inspire our kids creativity teaching them programming skills e.g. with Skema software.
Bala – I understand your frustration – Totally agree with you the schools should us the software from Skema. Due to lack of money to upgrade the computers used in school it´s grate idea to move the IT teaching to the cloud – the schools could then still use the old HW for some years to come by using SaS service on the Cloud.
Back to “WORD” – Some years ago my son was handing in is essay and was using OpenOffice on his new computer. He asked me if he could have $Word$ on his computer because he was not able to send in his essay on OpenOffice format. The teacher told him he was not able to read the essay because he was using Word !!
As we know the schools could save some money on MS software if they would us open source software. The government need to make this there policy to use open source software and we need to educate/inform the teachers about the endless possibilities available in IT now and the need to inspire our kids creativity teaching them programming skills e.g. with Skema software.
Thanks for your comment Bjorn… we just need to address this problem
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