Technology is reshaping how we work, play, socialise, think, learn and govern. It’s vital that we move the next generation of young people from passive consumers to active creators of tech, to ensure they can fully embrace its impact in shaping their lives.
Tackling an issue as complex as the UK tech literacy challenge (pdf) requires fresh thinking and collective effort from a wide range of sectors, over the long term. Parents, employers and kids themselves all have a role to play.
We brought together experts from the worlds of policy, parenting, business and education at a special event last autumn: to gather possible solutions, develop shared priorities and identify opportunities for collaboration. The resulting report (pdf) draws on the rich discussions at the crowdsourcing event, as well as the accompanying online conversation.
It maps out six of the key steps that will help move the dial on this agenda in 2016:
Concerted effort to make tech literacy a reality
Experts were clear that the development of tech skills are too essential to leave to luck and acquiring through osmosis. Society places great emphasis on ensuring young people obtain maths and english before leaving school, and there was broad agreement that tech skills should receive a similar status.
Creating new language and storytelling
The terms in which kids encounter tech in the classroom are more likely to turn them off than switch them on to the exciting places that learning about it can lead. So we need to build a new way of talking about technology to kids – both the concepts that underpin it and the critical role it plays in society.
Playing to kids’ passion points
To be truly inspired, young people need to see the relevance of tech literacy to the real world. We can help by creating challenges, projects and competitions that allow them to apply technology to solve problems they really care about. Technology for technology’s sake is a turn-off. But technology to change the world for the better is hugely motivating.
Engaging parents alongside kids
Parents have their kids’ best interests at heart, and have some valid questions about the prominence of technology in their everyday lives. Experts pointed to the power of families learning about tech together. Instead of attempting to blast parents with messaging to “correct” their opinions about the digital world, it’s more powerful to create activities that allow them to actively participate in nurturing their kids’ tech literacy.
Investing in teachers
Greater access to technology can enhance learning outcomes across the curriculum, but as recent research has shown its impact is limited unless teachers have the support and training to be able to get the best from it.
Business stepping up
Businesses can and should play a bigger role in bringing alive the range of possibilities that technology can lead to – and help shape the content of classroom learning to ensure it is fit for purpose.
BT is planning to take forward a number of these action areas, working in partnership with others as we shape our own contribution to building a culture of tech literacy. But it’s too important a conversation to leave here. The debate will continue both on Twitter (using #techliteracy) and on our tech literacy LinkedIn group.
It’s critical that we enter into a meaningful and nation-wide discussion about why we need to get tech right for the next generation, and how we can get there. Because it’s increasingly clear that this challenge matters to individuals and their families – to the businesses and the workforces of the future – and to economies and society as a whole.
Content on this page is paid for and provided by BT, sponsor of the technology and innovation hub.
