Luckily, there are 'many roads to Rome' when it comes to teaching kids about technology and helping them acquire tech knowledge and skills.
This was the theme of PreparationTech's recent panel at the Women in Tech Regatta Amsterdam virtual event on Wednesday, December 9th: 'The Many Flavours of Technology Education (and School is Only One of Them!)'.
Watch the panel here: https://youtu.be/IBJeOT18QkI
Deborah Carter, PreparationTech's Managing Director, developed and moderated the panel and brought together three people who spoke about different approaches to delivering tech education to kids. They were:
- Miriam Tocino, who taught programming to adults before creating the 'Zerus & Ona' book series which teaches young children how technology works
- Shaquille Veldboom, who taught himself 3D design from the age of nine and who has become an in-demand designer despite dropping out of college three times
- Dr. Parves Khan, who is creating new online learning experiences based on research and data insights for Pearson, the world's leading education technology company
The big takeaways:
- parents and educators should use a variety of approaches to provide kids and teens with tech education
- kids and teens should be encouraged to identify interests and teach themselves using online resources
- online learning based on AI and machine learning will explode in the coming years, creating more personalized learning which tracks ability, identifies areas of difficulties, and identifies learning patterns
- the COVID-19 pandemic has created inequalities in terms of access to the Internet and quality education and this needs to be proactively addressed
