(Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash) On June 4th and 5th, NewTechKids will welcome a delegation of approximately 50 students from Lagos, Nigeria to Amsterdam. We'll be teaching a 1.5 day programming bootcamp for students ages 10 - 12, encouraging them to think critically about programming and robotics in the context of automation and to apply design and programming concepts in order to develop a series of tech prototypes. We're collaborating with Skyways Travels

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Click here for more information and to register. The world is receiving a major wake up call. Hundreds of thousands of students from around the world have been marching to tackle climate change. Hashtags such as #FridayforFuture and #SchoolsStrike4Climate dominate social media. If we are going to tackle problems like climate change, pollution, extreme weather and other environmental challenges, we need to change our habits and invent new technologies. In recognition of the fact that

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NewTechKids is pleased to announce that it is collaborating with Stedelijk Gymnasium Haarlem, a prestigious Dutch high school in the city of Haarlem, to offer a new programming and robotics course.  In the context of automation, we'll provide students with a general introduction to programming and the design of technology systems. The course will combine deep analytical thinking about the implications of technology with hands on design and programming experience through a series of class

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Ten days left until NewTechKids' 'How to Raise a Tech Innovator' evening class for parents on January 30th. The class take place from 19:00 - 21:00 at the central branch of the Amsterdam Public Library. Register now! We thought we'd share some interesting findings from the registration information provided by parents who will attend the class. 100%: parents of boys (The fact that no parents of girls have signed up for the class is unfortunate.

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NewTechKids is super chuffed to announce that Margot Phillipps has joined our team as an advisor. Margot is a high school teacher in New Zealand who has taught Computing and Math at the high school and polytechnic level for 35 years. She also founded programs such as Young Women's Programming Contest and Programming Challenge 4 Girls in addition to the New Zealand Olympiad in Informatics. New Zealand is a leader in computer science education, home

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NewTechKids is pleased to announce that it is again collaborating with EF Tours, as a programming partner for its summer Global Leadership Summit events in Europe. EF Tours is an international education company that specializes in language training, educational travel, academic degree programs, and cultural exchange We'll be teaching a series of design and computer science workshops to high school students from around the world during events in Amsterdam and Davos, Switzerland. During our workshops in

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NewTechKids is pleased to announce its Fall 2017 line up of activities. We have spent the summer developing and testing new approaches to computer science education in partnership with our non-profit foundation, Stichting NewTechKids. During two, brand-new bootcamps, we taught computer science concepts along with a stronger focus on technological literacy. This took the form of presenting technology case studies and concepts for new technology and leading in-depth class discussions on the implications of technology

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In our quest to introduce computer science and technological literacy education in primary school, we often hear the same excuse as to why this is difficult to impossible: teachers already have enough on their plate. Introducing a new subject will overwhelm them, causing their overall teaching to decline in quality. So many countries find themselves in the same position: we know that we need to prepare children to function in a world filled with technology

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The way that computer science education is promoted to primary school-aged children can make all the difference. NewTechKids learned this lesson during our latest round of after-school computer science bootcamps which ran from January - March 2017. Previously, we had marketed our bootcamps as 'Discover Computer Science' or 'Explore Computer Science' and listed all of the wonderful computer science concepts that children would learn about: loops, algorithms, if-else statements, sequences, Boolean data, etc. This may have been great marketing to reassure parents

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Last week, we engaged our students in some serious challenge-based learning in order to understand systems thinking and how computers are embedded into all kinds of systems. We challenged the 7-12 year old kids in our 'Computers and How They Work' summer bootcamp to work in teams to design and program a smart energy system which could respond to different temperatures and activate a heating system when the room temperature dropped. In the process, they learned about  conditionals and if-else statements.

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