Next month, NewTechKids will head to the United Arab Emirates to teach a week-long series of computer science workshops for primary school students. We'll be teaching kids ages 4-12 during the 2019 Sharjah Children's Reading Festival, an annual mega-event dedicated to learning, reading and discovery. Themes will include algorithms and algorithmic thinking, computer and programming logic, and rapid prototyping and best practises in the field of technology design. Students will come from a mix of

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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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Super happy to announce our newest NewTechKids advisor: Phil Rynearson (aka Mr. Phil). Phil is a technology teacher in Early Childhood Education at the American School of The Hague in the Netherlands. He gained valuable experience as a classroom teacher for 17 years before devoting the last eight years to supporting students and teachers in finding authentic and empowering methods of integrating technology into school settings. He has worked in public schools in the United States

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Primary schools are playing an increasingly important role in providing students with computer science and technological literacy education and computational thinking skills as part of a  solid 21st century skills and education strategy. NewTechKids has been visiting a variety of primary schools in the Netherlands and interviewing principals and teachers in advance of our latest teacher training program which begins on Wednesday, January 17, 2018. Here are some tips for parents which will help you

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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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NewTechKids is super happy to announce that Linda Liukas, author of the wildly-popular coding book for children called 'Hello Ruby', has joined our advisory board. Linda is a Finnish computer programmer, children’s book writer and programming instructor. In 2014, 'Hello Ruby' raised $380,000 on Kickstarter, becoming the platform’s most highly- funded children’s book. Her book is the world’s most whimsical way to learn about technology, computing and coding. Linda co-founded Rails Girls, a site designed to help women learn basic

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Nine out of 10 times, TechKids' workshops are amazing. Tuesday's workshop was not one of them. The workshop began with a recap discussion of the main parts of a computer and how they work together. The children had no problem recalling this info from the previous week. Our teacher then introduced them to Raspberry Pi computers, clarifying that no, they were not edible. The kids assembled DIY computer kits and plugged them into computer screens to complete some programming

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