PassWord – 13th May 2015

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Speaker C: Welcome to Password with me, Peter Warren, on Resonance 104.4 FM. You’ve heard of artificial intelligence. Well, this is the real thing. Today I’m turning my attention to the next generation of technologists, the young people, and some older ones too, who are needed to plug the gaps in Britain’s skill set. The UK has an estimated shortage of 745,000 people with digital skills, and they’re going to be needed over the next 2 years, and top of the list are computer programmers. In a bid to fill this gap and get computing into the hearts of the education system and into the minds of its pupils, technology Energy companies are vying to get their products into school classrooms and even onto babies’ high chairs. Jane Wyatt’s been to Mission Grove Primary School in Walthamstow, a big multicultural school where 54 languages are spoken. Mission Control is in the USA, home of the Discovery Channel.

Speaker D: So I get to travel all around the world and meet with children in wonderful schools. That’s a pretty good job, isn’t it?

Speaker B: Can we say that question?

Speaker E: We need to move back to our classes now.

Speaker A: Can we be in this special?

Speaker B: What’s that?

Speaker D: Can we be in this special? Would you like to be in Newsbytes?

Speaker B: Yes! Why don’t we see if we can do that?

Speaker F: That’s Suzanne Thompson from the Discovery Channel’s education programme here at Mission Grove Primary School in Walthamstow. Teacher training and technology in the classroom let the children try out skills in computer coding and media production., as Deputy Head Ben Darling explains.

Speaker E: Well, now this is the first time for us that we’re going to start looking at composing an interview with different members of staff. And we had one boy, Artisham, who actually had a great idea of interviewing a guinea pig because we’ve got lots of wildlife in the school. So we wanted to come up with— well, Artisham’s completely come up with the idea himself of getting all these strange animals, their take on Michigan and what they observe on a day-to-day basis, things that we might not pick up on. So he’s busy working on ideas for that right now.

Speaker A: That’s really very creative.

Speaker E: It’s the media that we’ve got at Mission Grove. It’s because we’ve got things like the radio and the green screen, we can actually, you know, let children run wild with their imagination, and we can do things like that and have an interview with a guinea pig because obviously it allows us to go beyond and do things like that.

Speaker F: Suzanne Thompson is an evangelist for Discovery Channel. She’s the UK Vice President of the American TV network’s education programme.

Speaker D: Just like we teach children to read and we teach children to write, shouldn’t we teach children how to be able to use software and technology well? But shouldn’t we also expose to them how that software and technology is created, sort of unraveling the mystery behind all of those? And in essence, what we’re helping children do is problem solve, learning how to put together sequences, sort of some basic principles of engineering or logic or problem solving or algorithmic thinking. So what I see as the purpose of the objectives of the coding curriculum and the national curriculum is a recognition that we want our children to be agile, nimble learners in a 21st century technological environment where technology is changing so rapidly it’s challenging to keep up with that. So how do we teach our children really phenomenal cognitive skills like problem solving and algorithmic thinking and logic of direction that all are found in the world of coding and computing so that they are able to navigate problem-solving across maths or science or history or geography. And when they get to the adult stage of their lives, they embrace change and they embrace thinking about problem-solving and relevancy because they have a really strong skill set that is coming from the idea that coding and computing has a very relevant place in our world today.

Speaker F: So you don’t actually teach them code?

Speaker D: Well, at Discovery, our role is to supply our educational partners with high-quality digital content. In this particular case, we have a solution called Discovery Education Coding, and it just is a brilliantly designed system that helps teachers step children through the logic and thought process behind coding. So it’s also fun and engaging, but behind it is a strong sense of pedagogy and educational strategy and effective instructional practices that enable teachers then to take the coding program combined with the Discovery Education professional development and look at the specific objectives of the National Computing Curriculum and then be able to design high-quality learning experiences for their children so that One, they’re adhering to the requirements of the national curriculum, but they’re also recognizing this is a very powerful learning experience for their children as well.

Speaker F: So how far would they get towards being able to code?

Speaker D: Oh, using Discovery Education, you can code, and you can actually create what starts to look like an app. And children are very excited by that process because they can actually publish their own creations. So children actually learn how to program a particular feature, and then once they design the programming behind that feature, they can push play and literally see the results of their thinking process. So it’s a great application to be able to say, here’s what I’ve designed, let me see my results immediately. If I’m not happy with my results, I can go back right away and rethink the process. And when we think about life as adults, rethinking our processes and being logical and following directions are all such relevant life skills. So at Discovery, we really see that Discovery Education Coding coding, and the combination of the coding combined with the professional development helps really support teachers as they embrace 21st century technologies and good, strong quality life skills like thought processes and cognition and metacognition and problem solving and logic and sequencing, which are just such applicable skills for us as adults in our daily life. And we also know how excited children are when they see the results of their work and how engaged they are when they’re working in systems such as Discovery Discovery Education Espresso.

Speaker F: And headteacher Kate Jennings says the high-tech teaching fits in well with all the traditional activities of this school that dates back to Victorian times.

Speaker G: It’s ever-evolving. We had a meeting just before Easter to talk about how we could adapt it slightly because of different needs that come from the children and from the teachers, and that wasn’t a problem at all. Discovery looked at what we had planned and the areas that we’d discussed, and we’ve changed the program again slightly. So, see, it’s it’s ever evolving, and it’s that open partnership that we’ve had. And it’s been brilliant for us as a school. I was honored to be able to see our Christmas nativity, that it was Discovery Channel videoing it for the parents so they could buy their own Discovery DVD of our Mission Grove nativity.

Speaker F: So we say it’s, it’s been a fantastic partnership so far, and it fits quite well in that sense into the traditional things that you would be doing anyway. It’s quite high-tech. What about the equipment? Isn’t that very expensive and hard to use?

Speaker G: We again look very carefully about making sure that whatever hardware we buy, it fits with what we’re doing with Discovery and that it is child-friendly. And we make sure that we get proper training so all of the teachers know how to use the equipment and that it fits with what we’re doing with all the areas of the curriculum.

Speaker F: Discovery Education is currently in almost half of Britain’s primary schools and aiming for even more.

Speaker C: Jane Wyatt in Walthamstow with Discovery Education. Another big hitter is Oracle, and another Jane, Jane Richardson, has been explaining to me how the technology giant is getting its products into schools to steer children towards tech skills at a very young age.

Speaker A: From an Oracle Academy’s perspective, we want to be part of that support mechanisms to encourage students from the ages of 8 and above to look at computer science as an exciting career option, but also to expose them to the world of data as something that is going to be pervasive across any industry you work in in the future. The access to data, the understanding of how to gather and analyze data, is really going to become a core skill. So that’s why we focus in, in terms of our education programs, on these key areas like database design, programming, and application development with the likes of Java.

Speaker C: Why do you think it is that children don’t seem to be coming through in these STEM areas? I mean, it’s fairly obvious, must be fairly obvious to anybody that the new world is going to be based on new technology. And you would have thought that because of that, that they would want to participate. You would have thought because of the adoption of smartphones and the way that people are using social media, that they would want to get involved in this world. What is it that’s stopping them?

Speaker A: I think, I think given that I work right across Europe, Middle East, and Africa, I see different attitudes towards the development of computer science education. And I think the core is really at developing an understanding with the likes of ministries of education that these should become core subjects. You know, you’re quite right in saying it seems obvious to everyone, but actually developing the talent within the education system, within the schools, having their teachers coming through into the school system with those skills in their toolkit, so to speak, is something that we need to really build on. And that’s a long-term thing. And I think a good example of where there is a kind of concerted effort being made on this is through the European Union. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the EU Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs. It was launched 2 years ago at the European Commission. Where basically all of the IT sector and industry companies like ourselves, Cisco, SAP, IBM, etc., etc., were really all brought together to say what can the industry do to support this knowledge transfer in the education sector. And we all pledged 2 years ago to provide these types of education programs into schools, colleges, universities to try and all bring one part of the jigsaw to create that bigger ecosystem of teacher training, classroom resources, resources into the university space. And that is beginning to slowly have effect. But I think what we need to make sure is we continue to have these conversations with those that are in charge of the education development in countries to get them to continue to understand the critical aspect of having these core skills moving forward.

Speaker C: That’s the issue, isn’t it? You need people who understand the technology to be able to enthuse about it, to then enthuse the children about it.

Speaker A: Exactly. And if you look at the curriculum development in many different countries, What we are maybe not seeing is that curriculum keeping pace with what is happening within the industry. Therefore, some of the education resources that we have developed, for example, we have a nice program called Alice, which was developed by Carnegie Mellon University in the US, which is a program that allows very young students from age 8 and above to start learning basic object-oriented programming skills by creating cartoons. So you may have seen on TV the Barclay Bank Code Club. A very similar thing to that that we provide so that we can get students interested at such an early age that it actually becomes something that they think of as learning a language, for example. So it’s not seen as something that sits out there as being a mysterious and difficult skill, but something that they can learn from a very young age so that it becomes really part of their DNA, and then they can develop their own enthusiasm and understanding and hopefully take these skills up higher up in their curriculum when it becomes an option for them within their timetable, as an A-level, for example.

Speaker C: That’s the big issue, isn’t it? The big issue is one of visualization. You’ve got to be able to understand what it is you’re trying to do with the code. That’s quite an abstract idea. And it’s the abstract notion of language right from the beginning. I mean, in a sense, what you’re trying to do is to say computer coding is such a ubiquitous and universal language that it really should be plugged into us right from the earliest age, almost like our their own natural language.

Speaker A: Exactly. And I think the younger you are exposed to this, the less of a barrier it is to learning. Because if you take the example of language, which I think is very appropriate, you know, if you learn two languages from the age of 6 or 7, you don’t think about it. You’re just learning something as a language. Whereas if you take the language, you know, when you’re in your 20s, it becomes more difficult for you to do. It becomes a much more onerous thing, whereas when you are younger you are a sponge. You are learning many things at the same time. And learning the language of coding is a very similar thing. And if you look at, as you say, smartphones, every child is exposed to technology right now. They know how to use the technology. I think we need to get them excited about how you create it.

Speaker C: Where’s this all leading to? To infinity and beyond, if Professor Christopher Impey is correct. He’s an astronomer based at the Steward Telescope in Tucson, Arizona, and his book Beyond is a manifesto declaring all the thousands of reasons why he says we should press ahead with space exploration and start to populate other worlds with babies conceived born off planet.

Speaker H: So it’s a convergence. There’s— that technology is marked— some technologies are marching on very rapidly, especially the miniaturization. And some people have gone back to basics and started to redesign rockets from the ground up, like Elon Musk. And they’re, you know, just getting advances. You know, we sort of been relying on crutches, you know, the Soviets and Others are still using 60-year-old designs. And so I think there’s been some going back to basics. And then there’s a new geopolitical landscape. The Chinese are making quite plausible and ambitious plans that include space stations, Mars rovers, moon bases. And it would be foolish to doubt that they can do it. So that’s another component. And then, you know, so taking all that together, I sort of analogize, and then the emergence of a really robust private sector that doesn’t really depend necessarily just on Virgin Galactic and SpaceX, the big companies you hear about, but there’s a dozen or more that are sort of busy working away on the hard engineering of going into orbit. And, you know, so it all amounts to me to a critical mass.

Speaker C: And that’s the interesting point, isn’t it? That there is this private sector developing. And why is that? What returns can the private sector see in an industry which is, to say the very least, nascent?

Speaker H: Well, I think it starts with something that’s sort of almost so mundane as it’s below our notice, which is the telecommunications and the satellite industry is a hundreds of billions of dollar industry and we’re motivated for various reasons of climate and agriculture and security and make a long list to put more things into Earth orbit that are satellites, and now they’re going to be miniature satellites. So that’s just a very big and sturdy industry that has many reasons for growing. And that’s, you know, that feeds some of these other activities that seem a little less robust, like tourism in space and so on. It’s hard to believe that’s going to be a huge thing, but the economic models are actually fairly convincing. Just as if when you asked in 1922 or ’23, you know, could you envisage a civil aviation industry anything like the scale we have now, you’d say, no, of course not, flying is dangerous and only super rich people do it. Well, that’s just the truth, that’s just what space travel is or suborbital flight is now.

Speaker C: It’s an interesting point, isn’t it? Because there was one nation that you didn’t mention that’s already embarked on a space mission, and that’s the Indians. And the Indians did it because they said that for every dollar spent in space, so they get $10 back on the ground, right?

Speaker H: And so the, the, that part, the— and for the Chinese, it’s much more obvious that it’s a projection of national pride, and, uh, that’s their, you know, their projection of their self-image into space. And for the Indians, and probably eventually the Brazilians and a few other countries that are doing pretty well and growing, it’s going to be something that they do and that they take pride in it and they invest in it and it has some reasons that aren’t just purely economic. So it’s going to be a combination of those things, I think. But if I were going to analogize again as with the emergence of civil aviation, it would be that this year or roundabout now is like 1995 was with the internet. So that was the year that Amazon, you know, who no one had heard of, started, and Yahoo started, and the first coining of the word internet, actually. That was a time when essentially no one had email, and the internet was incubated in government labs and universities, and then emerged into this private sector, and now look at it. So we’re probably, you know, There are things that could derail it, but that could be where we are right now with space, with the space industry.

Speaker C: But isn’t one of the issues going to be with all of this? I mean, you talk about viable colonies on the moon and Mars, but the one restriction on all of this is water. The real big issue is being able to carry something as heavy as water out of our atmosphere and also to be able to generate water of our own, isn’t it?

Speaker H: Absolutely, and that’s also an area where the technology is really not even— doesn’t even have to be that cutting edge. So NASA has had— and I’ve been to the labs where they have these machines running, just humming away in a lab. They’ve had little plants that are easy to scale upwards that can take a cubic meter, which is about a ton of either the lunar soil or the Martian soil, and generate a liter of water out of that, and more on Mars if you’re lucky. You can get enough oxygen to start building your habitat and make rocket fuel. And then you can use these clever but fairly simple electrical-based technologies to turn the soil itself into slump block to build your habitat and protect yourself from cosmic rays and the environment. So basically you don’t have to bring it all there. You just use what’s already available.

Speaker C: Professor Impey believes space travel should inspire the next generations of engineers and technologists. And here on Earth, in Manchester and Cheltenham, the security service GCHQ is running summer schools in computer code, and an all-girls coder boot camp will help techie teenagers build their skills and confidence with the STEM-eds. Founder Anne-Marie Ammerfieden says it’s important to do things just for girls because they often don’t realise how attractive and creative technological careers can be.

Speaker B: Be. And then I was like, well, on my way up, I never realized I was a girl in technology or a woman in technology. Never interacted with any of these things, saw any of these things. But also, this is 21st century, and technology is everywhere. Like, when I was younger, it wasn’t. Now it is. All the kids are on Instagram, on Snapchat. Everyone’s got a mobile phone. We all use, you know, Uber to get around, LinkedIn, you know, whatever it is. Technology is so prominent, even in the lives of people that don’t work in technology. How is it possible that we have an entire gender sitting out from this agenda where they score higher than boys in school on these subjects. A gender where, you know, got a long history of women, some that we’ve forgotten perhaps, who have done— who’ve been pioneering. Women like Steve Shirley, women like Ada Lovelace, women like Sophie Marie Germain, who was a great French mathematician, women like Grace Hopper. All these different women that, you know, you think Einstein, you talk about Bruno Einstein, you talk about all these other people, but they never mentioned Steve Shirley. For goodness sake, you know, she’s within living memory here in the, in the UK. She’s made so much money from her development house. How is it that as a girl growing up here, I had no idea who she was? So it was like, okay, cool, let’s do something about it. I’m a, I’m a computer scientist, I’ve solved problems, that’s what you do. So then STEMx was born, and it was a punt. It was a, alright, see you later. It was a punt. It was, in theory, these girls need to see role models, their parents need to see role models and they need to see industry. So let’s try that. So it was panel events, it was hackathons, and the more we did, the more people got involved, the more girls got hooked on it, the more it was like, yeah, you know what, actually it’s true. The more people got in touch, the more schools got in touch, the more companies got in touch, and it just snowballed into this thing that we now have where it’s a community for girls who haven’t— and it’s for girls, so it’s, you know, you haven’t started a career, you’ve not necessarily graduated, you’re in school to come and explore what it is to become a STEMette, to be someone in the industry, and to understand the choice that you’ve got, to understand the creativity that’s involved, to understand the problem solving that’s involved, but also the opportunities that are in STEM, and not to self-select yourself out of that because technology is everywhere, right?

Speaker F: So once you leave school, what makes you think though that the girls and women were self-selecting out of it?

Speaker B: Because of the numbers. I mean You know, in technology we’ve got what, 17, 15% female? And all of them go to school the same time as the boys that have come out and gone into technology. So it’s definitely self-selecting. It’s not that they’re worse at it. You know, they score higher, they’re fully competent, they know, they know what it is. Even the girls that graduate from university in STEM subjects, there’s still a huge portion of them that don’t even go into the industry. So it’s definitely self-selecting. I mean, there’s no other— it’s not that then they’re, you know, in their droves not being hired, all these kind of things. So I think—

Speaker F: so what do they tell you about, you know, what’s holding them back from, from taking maths A-level, for instance?

Speaker B: So for the girls, there are a number of factors. And, and I say the girls, they’re not a homogeneous set, so it’s not the same thing that dissuades everybody. But for some of them, being the— going— for some of them, if they’re going to be the only girl in that class studying that subject, that’s rather daunting. That’s something they’d rather not do. They don’t want to be the only girl on their computer science course with all the boys. For others, it’s the sort of thing where they’ve constantly been told that they’re not good at it, they’re not good at this technology thing. So we had girls that came along to our first hack that came because it was a hack for girls, so they thought, you know, as girls we can come and tinker with it, whereas our brother normally says that we just break his computer. And they came along and they built an app and they won a prize, right? And it’s like, okay, they won a prize. Part of the prize was to go to a big tech conference and kind of see the industry and see and meet more people. And while they were there, they found that the app idea they’d had that they’d built over 2 days, having been girls that have been told they’re not good at technology and, you know, always break the computer, they found a startup that was doing their idea. And it’s like, wow, this thing I thought was completely shut to me and this thing I thought I couldn’t do is something that there are actual human beings— you know, I’m still a girl in school, this is a fully grown adult, 5 fully grown adults that in their life, when they wake up in the morning, they do my app idea and they go to bed, and the following morning they wake up and they continue working on that app idea. That mind change of, oh my goodness, not only can I be a creator, but I’m a creator of something that there’s someone else somewhere that has given up their entire life to create this thing and to build it. Why should I dissuade myself? Why should I discount myself from being a part of that? Why am I studying history when I could have equally studied studied, you know, a technical subject and gone into that and pursued my idea. And on that way, I’ll probably have a better idea or another idea that I can then pursue, and then that has some impact in the world and has some, you know, effects and change. So I think those are two for the younger girls, for the girls at the other end. Those are the two things that we see from them. It’s often they don’t know what’s involved to become a woman that works in technology or an engineer. And once they see what it is, it’s like, God, is that it? Is that what they do, sit around all day planning buildings or making sure this is structurally okay, or 3D printing things they come up with. I can come up with stuff from now till tomorrow, you know. What— why can’t I be doing that? Why aren’t I in that industry? So it’s that kind of thing where you, you need to change the perception. You also need to change their influences. So some of the women that have come to us that are role models that have now gone into industry come back and they say, yeah, when I was younger, I told my mom I wanted to study biochemistry, and she said to me, what are you going to do with that? ‘Or, you know, when I was younger, I had this person that said that, and I trusted them, and they said, no, no, if you do that, it’s going to be really difficult, you’re going to get your hands dirty. So I just didn’t— I didn’t choose to do it.’ So it’s those kind of things where if you understand— knowledge is power— if you actually understand what it is, what’s involved, you choose a different path. I mean, the, the last one that we see a lot of is girls that are like, ‘Yeah, I want to be in STEM, I want to be in medicine, I want to be a doctor.’ And it’s like, ‘Okay, great, fantastic, you know, we need doctors. Why do you want to ‘Cause I want to help people. Okay, any other, you know what? No, it’s just I want to help people and I was good at science, so Miss said I should go and do medicine. So okay, but in being good at science, if you want to help people, you could become an engineer, right? So we’ve got, just talking about them last week actually, 4 14-year-olds in Nigeria who’ve turned a liter of urine into 6 hours of electricity. I know, right? And it’s like, How many people are you going to help by turning urine into electricity, let alone, you know, being a doctor that treats one person at a time? And that’s not at all to belittle what doctors do, but if you’ve got the capacity to do that, if you knew— and some of them are like, God, you know, the same way you’re like, wow, they’re like, wow, forget being a doctor, I want to become an engineer. It’s like, of course you do, but did you know that’s what engineers did? No. So why would that be something that you want, that you, you want to try and So that’s the— those are the things that we often see with the girls when they come up.

Speaker F: And what about the technology industry? How is that responding? All those men, how are they responding to the STEM-ettes?

Speaker B: So, um, technology industry has been pretty supportive of us. I mean, we’re going 2 years now with people coming to us that are interested in what we’re doing and what we’re up to. We’re finding that commercially, economically, they’re missing out. They’re holding themselves back. And they’re seeing other companies take on and go on leaps and bounds and develop new products and have better perspective on their customers and have better perspective on the way that they approach the work that they’re doing just because they’ve got diversity. And that’s— gender is the most easiest obvious one, race is another one, and they’re all different types of diversity that we have. But the technology industry is now realizing, actually, since we are ubiquitous and we are serving people across the globe and we are serving all types of people that have had all of backgrounds, we do need to make sure as well that we’ve got them on our side working with us to help us develop things for these. So it’s, it’s important for them to do that, and it’s important for them to, to, um, be representative of their clients as well when they talk to them. And but also wider society is also looking at them and being like, you know, not to pick on Mark Zuckerberg, but you know, that you all look a bit like Mark Zuckerberg, you all look a bit the same, you know. What is it? Why is it that do you have have to be a Zuckerberg to do this, to do well, to get the computer science. You know, there’s something not quite up there. We’ve got more diverse judges and leaders and all these kind of things, and yet, you know, in the Valley, let’s say, or with the venture capitalists, you’re all guys. You know, there’s something up there. There’s something not quite right.

Speaker C: This is Password with me, Peter Warren, and if you’ve just joined us, you’ve missed it, but we’ll be back next week and you can find out more more about technology and society at our website Future Intelligence, where you can also sign up for our regular newsletter. Password is made by Angel Media Productions CIC. Thanks for listening.

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