Coding and the Future of Work

Technology has been taking over our lives for a long period of time, leaving no chance for a person to sit without a mobile phone for the whole day, and making it impossible for employees to get their work done without a laptop and a connection to the internet. This turned schools’ focus to coding and teaching students as young as kindergarten how to code , which might be useful but still carries along some of the drawbacks. The future of work is all about computing skills and computer science, so getting students prepared from early on is considered a must.

According to a report published by PWC ,it was expected that more than 77% of the jobs in 2020 will require some degree in technological skills, that’s why starting with kids as early as possible makes total sense.

Does Coding Prepare Kids for the Future of Work?

The thing with electronic devices and digital software is that they are being built in an easy and simple way for the user to deal with them, and thus they end up making people’s lives much easier as well. This is just an easy example of how the world of tomorrow will keep changing with every passing day, and in addition to the millions of jobs that are going to be available for today’s kindergarten students, there are thousands of those which will no longer be needed.

Inventors, engineers, and technicians are already introducing ideas related to self-driven cars and planes, smart houses, robots, and lots of other things related to artificial intelligence which will be able to take over the job roles of millions of employees out there, so could you even imagine how the future of work will look like 5 years from now?

Looking at the top needed jobs in the coming future, computer related ones are always on top of the list, if not even taking over the whole thing. Computer user support specialists and all the other computer-related occupations need workers who already have studied computer science and could fit in any of these different work positions. Some countries already started implementing coding education in their schools curriculum and there are those who are still trying to achieve the step, the problem will occur when kids find no access for such technology at their own homes and when teachers appear to be not skilled enough to teach computer science.

Coding is known to be the language of the future, it is the language that people talk to a computer with in order for it to understand, take orders, and start achieving, and that’s mainly the reason why parents believe that teaching kids how to code means preparing them for the future of work, which is somehow true.

In Canada for example, 9 out of 10 Canadian parents think that their children would be better suited for the jobs of tomorrow if they learn coding, and this proves why about third of the Canadian students receive coding education in their schools.

According to the future of computing jobs we are going to face, it seems that tech workers will not be only part of the tech jobs, but every field out there will require the employee to have some technical skills. This is important because it gives schools and universities the chance to think about the content they are supposed to teach to the students in order to keep them prepared. There are actually different organizations out there which are trying to get all the kids exposed to coding, even those as young as kindergarten, to put them in the picture and keep them prepared for the demands of the future.

What to Consider When it comes to Coding?

Coding education in schools is definitely beneficial, the thing is that some specialists believe that even though students might know how to code today, they might not know how to code in the future because programming languages are always changing. It is important for them to start, because coding will definitely take them closer to where they want to be, but they should be learning different skills at the same time, that’s why most of the schools and organizations which are teaching kids to code follow the STEAM education standards.

STEAM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics, is followed in different schools around the world that are teaching their students how to code. Delivering the coding lessons combined with STEAM makes the student not only learn technical related things, but is also collecting information related to different other fields, and we have to say that science is still as much important as technology, so kids should be learning everything all at the same time.

When it comes to coding, there is one important thing that countries should consider which is related to the Third World countries and their children. Rich countries could simply benefit from coding education, but the Third World children will not have access to such technology in the first place and thus would face a dividing gap in terms of digitization of their own countries. According to UNICEF, about 29% of youth are not online worldwide, and we have to say that the highest percentage is found in Africa, since 60% of the African youth are not online, compared to only 4% when it comes to Europe.

There are some NGOs trying to make coding education available for every child and to make computer science education something foundational, such as Code.org, which include donors such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and others, and which is also partnering with different companies that provide coding education content, such as Codemonkey, CodeSpark, CodeCombat, RoboGarden, as well as others.

THE FUTURE OF WORK

There are several different changes that will take place in the future of jobs and which are all affected by technology in general, such as the decentralized workforces that are already happening, allowing employees to live where they want and choose the job they prefer without having to be all in the same place. Today’s students should be ready for the future that will bring robots as coworkers with them, which is all due to artificial intelligence, which means that the future employees will have to work on bringing out the best techniques where they could deal with intelligent machines to bring out the best outcomes.

In order for students to keep up with the changing world of technology and be ready to fit in the jobs of the future, they are not just supposed to learn coding, but they should be always developing their skills and learning new ones because technology will be always taking over the roles of the workers, so at this point they will need to upgrade in order to fill another needed position and do its tasks.

RoboGarden is one of the different companies that teach coding to kids through both ways, Blockly and Textual, by providing them a game-based platform that makes the whole education process much easier. Sign up and start the coding journey education for your kids.