TECHNOLOGY AIDS ACADEMICS

Bill Gates

Chairman, Microsoft

Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains.

STREM HQ teaches technology skill set required to ensure your child will be always at pace with emerging technologies in a friendly and fun atmosphere which encourages kids to learn and get ahead.

There's a low hum out there in the real world, the talk of an older generation that feels technology is making kids lazier and less intelligent, but that couldn't be further from the truth. In the day of the text, kids are constantly writing to each other, to parents, and to their teachers. Not only are they writing more, but they are learning early on how to write for each audience. The audience forum extends as well to blogs that kids create to express themselves. The ability to write for an audience used to be exclusive to the published authors of this world. Now everyone has access to a forum for their creativity. You could argue that texts encourage sloppy, abbreviated writing skills, but you'd be wrong. There's plenty of new research that supports that today's kids have a unique ability to change their style across all forums for writing. This is in direct corrolation to the early experience they are getting by using technology.

Stanford University's Professor Lunsford states, "The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them, writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it's over something as quotidian as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade."

Richard Branson

Founder, Virgin Group

Whether we're fighting climate change or going to space, everything is moved forward by computers, and we don't have enough people who can code. Teaching young people to code early on can help build skills and confidence and energize the classroom with learning-by-doing opportunities. I learned how to fly a hot air balloon when I was 30,000 feet up and my life was in the balance: you can learn skills at any age but why wait when we can teach everyone to code now!

Learning code is becoming a force in writing as well. Writing code is essential to being able to "read" technology. A real understanding of one cannot happen without the other. Coding is based on "if, then, and when" statements that allow kids to understand some basic concepts of literature and strengthen the foundations of writing. Mitch Resnick of MIT Media Labs and the kids coding program Scratch points out that coding games work to their highest potential when kids see them as a motivator and a meaningful tool to learn. When kids learn in schools about variables they don’t really understand why they’re doing it, which is why they aren’t learning it as deep or as good as in the games. But he expresses that variables are just the beginning, kids are now learning about design, collaborating with other people, finding and fixing bugs, perseverance. All really important skills for the everyday workforce. The kids who learn this information are going to have a competitive edge when they grow up, there’s no doubt about it.