LeBron James (Pro Basketball Player)
We don’t need more LeBrons, Drew Breezes, Adriana Limas, etc. But we do need more coders, scientists, and technologists. This is actually an old message that the technology world has known for quite some time, but it’s picking up STEAM (pun intended for those that know what STEAM is), now with the help of Verizon. Verizon is starting to really push this message to help our next generation realize this and hopefully influence their career choices just a bit. Let’s all join in and help teach more kids to code.
Adriana Lima (SuperModel)
If you’re an adult reading this, I’m sure you can relate to when you were a kid and recall what you wanted to be. As with most kids, you want to be a model, pro football or basketball player, etc. No kids usually pick the software engineer as their dream job destination. And if you’re a kid reading this, I’m sure you probably would like to be a model or pro athlete. We all kinda do in general, but the key is the reality behind it. It’s actually fine to want to be a super model or pro athlete. The important thing is to at least be aware of the other options. Plenty of kids aren’t even aware of these other options and just focus on the really improbable careers with no back up. We’re not asking kids to give up their dreams of becoming Adriana Lima. What we are asking is to simply help them be aware of the facts and consider a few other options.
Just the Facts Ma’am
The facts show that there’s 4 million tech jobs right now and that it will continue to grow. According to code.org there’s over 500,000 open tech jobs right now! And it’s projected to be over 1M open tech jobs by 2020. That’s only 3 years from now and it’s almost an unbelievable amount of open jobs. This is not total jobs, but unfulfilled which is just ludicrous when you really think about it. Now you tell me, what do we need more of?
The Movement
Thanks to Verizon and the many others that all believe in this movement to help kids become more aware of the facts and options. And with more knowledge, will come more inspiration and change. Verizon has created a resurgence of this movement which is helping and there’s a very valid tagline “We Need More” and website to go along with it. They’ve created some really nice videos as well to help get this point across and reach more of the next generation.
theCoderSchool was formed with this movement to teach all kids to code in mind. Together with companies like Verizon, other coding/tech schools, Code Coaching®, STEM, and STEAM initiatives we can do this! We need more!