for example, the Ministry of Education established a computer education development plan as early as 1988, placing computers and instructional software in all schools. It was the first country to connect all schools to the internet, and today enjoys one of the highest per capita rates of internet use in the world. The speed with which lower wage economies are embracing high quality computer education throughout their school systems is encouraging a second round of job outsourcing from higher wage economies. In the US, the Dice 2012-2011 Salary Survey notes eight skills that commanded six-figure salaries and experienced above average (some as high as 30%) growth over the last year. All eight are software development skills. This lethal cocktail of rising wages and skill shortages is forcing employers to outsource software development, costing their economies millions of dollars and depriving them of the innovation that drives future growth.
HARNESSING ENTHUSIASM Skills shortages don’t just hurt economies, they hurt industry, too – and industry is beginning to take action. An initiative led by e-skills UK called ‘Behind the Screen’ had the support of employers including IBM, the BBC, BAFTA, Blitz Games, Capgemini, Cisco, Deloitte, HP, John Lewis, Logica, the Metropolitan Police Service, Microsoft, National Grid, Procter & Gamble, Sainsbury’s, SAS, Steria and TCS to create materials for teaching IT at GCSE level. The pilots of the programme have been so successful that it is being launched nationally one year ahead of schedule. When Ian Livingstone and Alex Hope from the computer gaming world launched their report, Next Gen, calling for computer science to become part of the national curriculum, several industry giants, including Microsoft, Sony, Google, Nintendo and Sega, threw their weight behind the recommendations and are working with government to develop teacher training programmes. Many fear this will take too long, however, and is targeting young people too late in their development. “I believe it will take ten years to re-design the curriculum and train the teachers we need to be producing a steady flow of young people ready and enthusiastic to take up computer science,” says Emma Mulqueeny, CEO of Rewired State and Young Rewired State. “We have to look outside the school system to develop innovative ways of reaching the kids.” In 2008 Mulqueeny had the idea of running a ‘weekend hack’ to engage young people in accessing and querying government open data. She had 50 places to fill, but despite a concentrated marketing campaign, ended up with a mere three applications. In desperation she contacted secondary schools directly for their best computing students but was told by most schools that they did not offer computer science classes. In the end, she found 50 students who were mostly self-taught. What struck her about the weekend was how grateful the students were to meet each other and find they were not alone in their secret passion. It seems once the kids are engaged in the creative process, they develop their own support network and peer to peer learning takes over.
Young Rewired State now runs annual events for over 800 kids from ages seven and up. “Year 8 (in the curriculum) is too late,” Mulqueeny says. “In junior school the kids are open to more relaxed learning where they can explore and be creative. They love seeing what they can make a computer do. By senior school the learning process is more formal and less engaging. We lose a lot of kids, especially the girls, by not reaching them at an early age.” Another innovative project is engagingly called the Raspberry Pi. Founder of the not-for-profit organisation, Ebon Upton, had worked with the computer centre at Cambridge University and then with chip manufacturer, Broadcom, searching for a platform for giving young people the opportunity to get involved in programming. “We’ve always had this idea that you’re not going to appeal to children with a platform that can’t do anything interesting,” he says. “I grew up with a computer I could program. I learnt to program not because anyone ever thought of teaching me to program and I think a lot of people of the same generation had the same experience.”
The appeal of the Raspberry Pi is its simplicity and its price. Stripped down to just a circuit board with no memory (it uses an SD card) and no peripherals, the Raspberry Pi retails for as little as $25. It is designed for writing simple software and learning the basics of computer hardware, but it can operate as a full PC as well. Although the developers expected to sell around 1000 units, they are now on target to sell a million in their first year. Raspberry Pi’s can be found as far afield as New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and Brazil.
COMPUTATIONAL THINKING Supporters of teaching children to program computers point out that even if they do not go on to work in the industry they will benefit from learning ‘computational thinking’. According to John Naughton from The Observer, “it’s about understanding the difference between human and artificial intelligence, as well as about thinking recursively, being alert to the need for prevention, detection and protection against risks, using abstraction and decomposition when tackling large tasks, and deploying heuristic reasoning, iteration and search to discover solutions to complex problems.” One country has embraced the concept wholeheartedly. ProgeTiiger is Estonia’s ambitious programme to teach all school children from the age of seven to 19 how to write code. “We want to change thinking that computers and programs are just things as they are,” said project manager Ave Lauringson. “There is an opportunity to create something, and be a smart user of technology.” This, according to Google’s Schmidt, is exactly the
approach that will create competitive advantage. “Technology will be a great leveller,” he says, “and those countries that can equip their young people with the tools to master it, rather than simply to use it, will thrive.”
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