While some formal education is an important aspect of preparing for future careers, it’s not the path for everyone. Many people working in the tech industry and creating/producing/making with tech tools are self-taught, relying on books, online resources, YouTube tutorial, free software, coding forums, and hands-on experience. Shaquille Veldboom, a young black man who grew up in Amsterdam Southeast, a low-income, predominantly black community, was the recent subject of a PreparationTech interview. At the age

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It's important to teach kids that technology inventions often come from personal needs and experiences of adversity. In this excerpt from the PreparationTech interview featuring Zuby Onwuta, this African inventor and disability advocate talks about his personal experience of losing his eyesight and how it caused him to blend medical research, his training in engineering and passion for technology. Zuby is the inventor of 'Think and Zoom’ technology which magnifies objects based on brain wave

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"I personally hate to code. I understand how beneficial it is but to me, if engineering was projected as coding and robotics, it wouldn't be something that suits me." In this PreparationTech interview produced by NewTechKids, Danielle Geathers, a third-year Engineering student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the first black, female President of the Undergraduate Association at MIT (student government) in 159 years, advises parents, teachers and school counsellors to focus on teaching

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Parents, teachers, school counsellors: do you know a kid who is obsessed with electronics, tinkering and making things? Engineering and inventing tech is a great study path and career opportunity for her or him. In this PreparationTech interview, Deborah Carter, NewTechKids' Founder and MD, interviews Isaac Sesi, a young Ghanaian man who was named by Massachusetts Institute of Technology as one of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35 in 2019. Isaac talks about

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Parents, teachers, school counsellors: do you know a kid who is fascinated by inventions, inventors and technology? In this PreparationTech interview, Deborah Carter, NewTechKids' Founder and MD, interviews Natalie Raffoul, Managing Partner at Brion Raffoul and one of the top Intellectual Property (IP) and patent lawyers in Canada. "I'm Managing Partner of a law practice called Brion Raffoul. We have a group of really great professionals here with technical backgrounds who advise innovative companies on

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Do you know a kid who is crazy about the giant animated robots at theme parks? Or who is  fascinated by cyborgs and human-like robots? Studying robotics can lead to a career in many areas, including but not limited to animatronics, engineering, design, game design, medicine and education. Sculpture, animation, cognitive science, material science, computer science, AI and programming are just some of the fields which intersect with robotics. David Hanson, CEO of Hanson Robotics,

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NewTechKids has been invited to contribute to VHTO’s new teacher training initiative, DigiLeerKracht. The initiative will focus on providing free training and support for primary school teachers in the Netherlands who are interested in teaching computational thinking in the context of programming. The initiative aims to train 2000 teachers from 2017 - 2019. The initiative is supported by Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google. VHTO is the Dutch national expert organization focused on the participation

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NewTechKids has been invited to contribute to VHTO’s new teacher training initiative, DigiLeerKracht. The initiative will focus on providing free training and support for primary school teachers in the Netherlands who are interested in teaching computational thinking in the context of programming. The initiative aims to train 2000 teachers from 2017 - 2019. The initiative is supported by Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google. VHTO is the Dutch national expert organization focused on the participation

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In early October, I was in South Korea to speak at the International Symposium of Science Museums. My subject: NewTechKids and our approach to teaching computer science and computational thinking skills to primary school-aged children. I joined representatives from some of the world's leading science museums, including the Smithsonian, the Getty Museum, Science Center Singapore and the National Science Museum of Korea. We discussed the social responsibility of science museums and the important role that

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