Reconsider Children’s Digitality
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Lis Zacho is a maths teacher and IT enthusiast, who is reconsidering children’s digital skills. She asks the question: why should children learn IT? As a volunteer who teaches kids how to use and play with coding, Lis shows us that our children are the key to our future challenges – and, even more so when they understand the logic of code.
When we see babies operating smartphones and tablets, we believe these children to be digital natives, but Lis believes digitality is much more than entertainment, pictures and videos. Not only do children have to be users and consumers of digital media, they need to be producers of digital solutions as well. And just like learning the violin, learning how to code takes time and practice.
- NO ONE IS A DIGITAL NATIVE; WE ALL NEED TO LEARN.
Convinced that children need to be comfortable with IT, Lis Zacho volunteered to start a Coding Pirates’ group in Frederiksberg one year ago. The initiative quickly attracted 40 children curious to develop their digital skills and use their creativity to make movies, program robots and create other cool projects. Interestingly, the project has revealed that as children become more familiar with computers and digital technology, playing and learning are reconsidered as new possibilities open up for children – possibilities that are tools for life as opposed to mere toys.
- CHILDREN ARE THE KEY TO THE FUTURE.
To solve the challenges of the future, Lis believes that children need to learn IT. We ought to consider what new digital devices may be created by them and what problems they may be able to solve with better IT skills. Lis wants to raise awareness: it is time to reconsider investing more in digital technology teaching.
Come to the 2016 Main Event on April 7th and be inspired by Lis Zacho’s live talk!
- By Jasmine Crozier
About the speaker
Lis Zacho is a maths teacher, maths supervisor and a student of IT didactic design at Aarhus University. While doing some research projects on children’s learning and digital solutions, she volunteers for Coding Pirates, an association that exists in different cities around Denmark to promote children’s creative IT skills. Besides this, she recently co-founded Kreakode, a project for teaching coding in schools.
Links: Coding Pirates, Kreakode