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 week, primary school children in Amsterdam head back to school. Like so many previous academic years, most of them will not have any computer science or computational thinking lessons as part of formal school curricula. As long as education systems here in the Netherlands and around the world don't integrate these, we urge parents to take matters into their own hands. Intervening early will ensure that children acquire 21st century skills and prepare them

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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 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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