A Glimpse of Technology in Middle School : GirlsGrow’s Workshop in Gurugram, Delhi NCR

We are proud to announce the successful completion of our Careers in Technology Workshop at Gurugram’s Sankalp School! With the main focus of this workshop on software engineering, we gave a brief introduction of the field, its worldwide impact and potential careers to middle school children. Our goal was to ignite curiosity, establish analogies and help children see software’s role in their everyday lives, perhaps the next time they pick up their parents’ phones!

Since software is rarely introduced at this stage in a child’s education, we carefully adapted our presentation to suit young learners. Starting with light introductions and aspirations, we were amazed by their diverse responses — ranging from doctor to astronaut, scientist to army officer. Building upon their interests, we highlighted software’s pervasiveness in daily life, from mobile phones and laptops to hospitals and even superhero tech! To explain software’s career opportunities, we used a simple yet effective analogy of a pen to break down career roles into design, development, and management. This was followed by an engaging game where children classified phone components into these roles — a fun and insightful way to reinforce learning.

It was great to see the receptiveness of the children, their immense sense of curiosity and an infectious desire to learn the “why” of things. We also saw a wave of interest as we started diving into things like computer games, social media and other present day technologies. One thing which caught our attention was interest in the field of hacking. While their view was restricted, it was surprising to see a couple of 10 year olds talking about a possible career in computer security! Other than their obvious enthusiasm, it was exciting to see the sheer breadth of interests, related questions and a fluid mindset this early in their educational journey.

After conducting numerous such workshops, we have come to realize that each of them is as much of a learning experience for us as it might be for the children. We observed that a great way to mitigate children’s smaller attention span is by introducing games in discussions. Children are naturally attracted towards play and adding a touch of fun always makes the conversation more interactive and well received. Moreover, simplicity and zero jargon goes a long way when talking with young learners. Lastly, having a less rigid presentation structure and active audience participation makes things a lot more interesting.

These experiences have equipped us to better empower children to explore technology on their terms. With more workshops in the pipeline, we look forward to continuing this journey of inspiring future leaders, one workshop at a time.