Parents, teachers and caregivers often ask NewTechKids' team members how they can prepare kids for a world of pervasive technology which is shaping almost every facet of life. They want to give their kids the best opportunities for success yet are overwhelmed, confused and don't feel well-equipped because they did not grow up in a tech-driven world. This causes a lot of anxiety so here are our top four tips for preparing kids for an
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A big 'thank you' to Tessa Wernink and Impossible for featuring Deborah Carter, NewTechKids' Founder and Managing Director, on the 'What If We Get It Right?' podcast series. Listen to the podcast. Deborah spoke about her six years of experiencing leading NewTechKids and her ideas on a new way forward in terms of preparing kids for a future of constant and pervasive technological development. One of these ideas led her to hep launch PreparationTech, an online
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Preparation is Power! Especially for parents and caregivers, teachers and school guidance counselors helping guide kids in their study and career paths. NewTechKids is pleased to announce that we are supporting PreparationTech, a new online video platform which explores how technology is transforming study, training and work in every industry, field and discipline. (Deborah Carter, our founder, is the Managing Director of this non-profit foundation.) It showcases the personal stories of a diverse and inclusive group
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Parents and teachers often ask us how to they can move kids beyond just using technology. They ask us what they can do to how to encourage kids to think about how technology works, the implications of technology on humans, and the computer science knowledge and skills they will need to become technologists. This summer, we've launched a feature via LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to help parents and teachers who don't have a background in
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Like most technology education academies, NewTechKids struggles to attract equal numbers of girls and boys to our programs. There are a lot of reasons for this. Most of the time, parents don't even present computer science and programming activities as options for their daughters. They conclude that computer science 'isn’t a fit' for their daughters although it's often 'perfect' for their sons. Girls themselves have told us that learning about technology is hard and often
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This summer, NewTechKids taught a new round of computer science bootcamps to children ages 7-12. We've been reviewing how and what we teach and how to engage a broad range of students, including kids with no previous exposure to computer science education, girls, minorities and children from low-income communities. We concluded that in addition to teaching computational thinking skills and computer science concepts, our job is to inspire kids and to cultivate curiosity about technology:
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Parents are often shocked when we tell them that during our programs, we teach core technology, programming and computer science concepts through pen and paper exercises, role-play games, and design and prototyping activities using simple materials such as cardboard boxes and blocks. Others wonder why, in an era of computers and gadgets, apps and programming languages made especially for kids, we teach many no tech lessons. We’ve developed our pedagogy and teaching approaches based on the
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NewTechKids achieved a major milestone last week. Over the course of five training sessions, we trained 75 primary school teachers in Amsterdam and Delft to teach our 'intro to coding' lesson to students aged 4-8 during EU Code Week 2015 (October 10-18). Our lesson doesn't focus on technical coding skills. Instead, we focus on exposing young kids to concepts such as coding, commands, algorithms and automation. It was so encouraging to see teachers from Dutch and international
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NewTechKids is happy to announce an academic research partnership with Leiden University. Under the partnership, NewTechKids' programs will become a platform where quality control research will be conducted on our pedagogy, teaching approaches, curricula and lesson plans. Tessa Slim, a Master's of Education student at the University, will conduct the research to assess whether NewTechKids' technology, programming and computer science programs for primary school aged children help kids improve their higher order thinking and problem-solving
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