Empowering kids to create and command technology

On a normal work day you’d find me in the Xero offices. Last week I found myself in a high school wearing a purple t-shirt with a unicorn jumping through a rainbow.

Sitting in front of me was a wonderfully diverse group of kids: Māori, Niuean, Sāmoan and more! They seemed a little bit nervous, but so was I. Behind me was a selection of robots, laptops, and piles of electronic components. The kids were there to have some fun during their school holidays. I was there as part of a team to help them learn some of the problem solving and technical skills that us engineers use every day. By afternoon, they would be writing code, building circuits, and solving problems all by themselves.

From a young age I had access to a computer, support from my parents to experiment, and time to spend at the local library where I would read about the robots of the future. As a teenager I repaired broken computers, and followed online tutorials to hack together my own websites. A career in software engineering was a natural progression for me. Not everyone has this privilege. For people who didn’t grow up in the middle class, who don’t fit into the programmer stereotype — this isn’t even something they’d think is an option for them.

When my colleague Ruth James at Xero posted about a volunteering opportunity to introduce the next generation to tech, I was eager to get involved. Xero even sponsored me to volunteer for a day — like it does for all of its employees.

After a short introduction of everyone in the room, we split off into our first workshops. We went into a classroom where Christian from OMGTech asked the kids what they thought robots were. With some discussion, they came to realise just how many robots surround us every day. Vending machines are robots, drones are robots — now even some cars are robots! He explained that we are not the people who are going to be building the robots of the future, it’s them: the people who are in school now. It was all very exciting.

Next, the kids were given a task. We had constructed some mazes on a big open floor using masking tape. The challenge was to program little tracked robots to navigate the maze using some simple commands. Go forward for 5 seconds, turn left for 0.5 seconds, go forward for 2 seconds, play a sound, and give a little wiggle! They were able to program the robots in English, Te Reo, Niuean, or Sāmoan. After all, programming languages are just a way for humans to communicate instructions to machines. We encouraged them to test their work as early as possible, to fail early, fail often, and learn through their mistakes — exactly how we work at an actual software company. Within about 30 minutes, they were completely self sufficient. When they solved a problem, they shared their joy with their friends and showed us what they had achieved. When they got stuck, volunteers were around to help them ask the right questions.

After a quick break for lunch, we were on to a second session. We learned about microprocessors, Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), and how we can build electronics to solve problems. The kids were shown how we could make an LED flash on and off using code. Once we had explained how the code worked, we encouraged them to tinker. Change the values and see what happens. Can you make it flash quickly? Can you make it flash intermittently? After a few minutes, quite a few of them had some interesting things happening and were able to explain exactly why. It was very cool. The instructor then described how we could flash an LED incredibly quickly to make it look like it was dim. Then we changed the code to do just that. Watching the students’ faces change when they realise the simple ideas behind how this kind of technology works was incredibly rewarding.

At about 3pm, that was the end of the day. In just a day, I had a peek into what teaching could be like, had been amazed by how fast kids pick things up, and gained a real sense of how important this kind of work is. I’m incredibly grateful for the folks at OMGTech for what they do, and to Xero for sponsoring me for the day.

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