Five reasons to teach entrepreneurship to teenagers
Catherine Whitaker, CEO & Head of Learning of EtonX, discusses how to teach entrepreneurship skills to the next generation of business leaders… Entrepreneurship has gained mass appeal on our TV screens, through the naked ambition of the Apprentice or the trenchant verdicts of the Dragon’s Den judges. But are we missing the opportunity to communicate entrepreneurship’s wider value in preparing for our schoolchildren for the future? Having developed an online entrepreneurship course for teenagers around the world, I know there are many transferable skills children can develop from entrepreneurship training. Here are five of the key ones. The first is creativity. Entrepreneurship requires students to use idea generation techniques both to come up with new business opportunities and to deal with the hurdles they might meet putting their idea into practice. Analytical thinking is the second benefit. Children will come up on day one with ideas such as a music-sharing app but guiding them to carry out research and find out if there is actual demand for it develops analytical skills. Entrepreneurs are quick to test ideas (often with a Minimum Viable Product), learn from test results and decide either to iterate or to start again. This, too, requires analysis but also, adaptability – the third key skill. Students learn to be flexible, to embrace different perspectives and respond to feedback. The fourth skill is persuasion. Gaining support for a product or service from potential collaborators, investors and customers requires persuasive skills. Students need to think hard about what will motivate any of these people to support them, what messages will appeal and how to present their calls to action. Finally, teenage entrepreneurs rarely work alone so the skill of collaboration is also developed through entrepreneurship experiences. Putting students in groups to develop a concept and pitch it to their peers creates an engaging way to gain build their confidence and ability to work with others. Generation Z need to develop core skills like entrepreneurship These transferable skills – creativity, analytical thinking, adaptability, persuasion and collaboration ‒ are critical for rounding out Generation Z’s education. As jobs worldwide are being automated away by technology, our students need to develop the core human skills that allow them to adapt to change with new ideas and ways of working. The Apprentice and Dragon’s Den provide a gripping view of entrepreneurship. For my money though, the true benefits of teaching this subject lie in its fostering of children’s ability to come up new ideas, analyse success or failure and work collaboratively in a team, all of which equip them with crucial soft skills for a fast-changing world. See www.etonx.com for more information on entrepreneurship courses.
Physical computing: teaching the teachers
FutureLearn offer CPD on the teaching of computing. Here, programme coordinator Dan Fisher and training manager James Robinson explain why their course ‘Teaching Physical Computing with Raspberry Pi and Python’ – using the mini-computers alongside the coding programme – is changing the way teachers think about computing and how they can improve the future of programming in the UK. 1. What is “physical computing”? How is it used in industry? Physical computing means interacting with real-world objects by programming them from a computer. Examples include programming an LED to flash, reading environmental data from a sensor, or even controlling robotic objects. Applications like these are all around us in everyday life, from traffic signals and ticket barriers to driverless cars and assembly lines. Behind each of these applications are algorithms and programs that govern their behaviour. Physical computing is combining hardware and software in order to create something useful or productive, or simply just for fun. 2. Why is it important to teach physical computing to pupils and from what age do children learn these skills? Many concepts in computing are abstract and symbolic, which presents a huge challenge for learners who are new to the discipline. Physical computing connects these concepts to something concrete and tangible, where learners can see the direct impact of the programs they write. When a learner (of any age) flashes an LED for first time, it’s a literal lightbulb moment: instructions they gave the computer produce an output in the real world! From there they can go on to control other outputs, as well as reacting to inputs. A challenge in teaching computing is finding engaging contexts that learners can relate to. We think that physical computing is one of the most engaging and most useful contexts in which learners can thrive. 3. Is it a worry that technology is advancing so quickly when some teachers aren’t receiving adequate training? How can schools combat this? As technology advances, educators and learners alike need to be able to adapt to the new possibilities that it brings. However, there seems little value in focusing on learning about specific technologies, as these invariably adapt, improve, or become outdated. Instead, educators should use current technologies to learn and teach about the core concepts of computing. For example, instead of learning a specific programming language, we should instead focus on learning programming using any appropriate language(s). Teachers should club together to work on physical computing 4. What advice do you have for staff who are concerned that their computing skills aren’t up to scratch? There are many resources out there to support educators. One of the best resources is simply other educators, which is why all our online courses are created by educators for educators and have a collaborative approach throughout. Educators can also sign up for Hello World, a free magazine for computing educators, by other educators. Start an informal computing club such as a Code Club or CoderDojo, test out some ideas, and learn alongside your learners. This way you can find out what works and what doesn’t, discover what engages your learners, and trial ideas that you can then take to the classroom. More advice on how to develop as a computing teacher can be found in our Hello World article by experienced teacher James Robinson. 5. What is the next advancement in computing which you foresee teachers needing training on? As suggested earlier, new technologies don’t necessarily change the fundamentals of computing. That being said, there are areas of computing that, over time, are become more and more important. As technology becomes more and more embedded in our daily and personal lives, there is a greater need to understand how it works and the impact it is having. Topics like encryption, machine learning, AI, and computer ethics are going to become increasingly important for students and therefore educators to understand. A reasonable understanding of the principles of computing is needed in order to engage in these important and highly relevant topics. For more information on FutureLearn, see www.futurelearn.com. For information on RaspberryPi mini-computers, see www.raspberrypi.org