Making computer science education more available
Technical Training
"maddog" looks at some ways that computer science education can be made available to students of all ages.
Once again a discussion around education and jobs raises its head in the United States. People are talking about the huge costs of university education and the huge debts that students will have when they graduate. Of course, if you live in various countries in Europe (Germany comes to mind) or Latin America, public universities are free of tuition, and government scholarships to private universities are available, so much of the expense is dismissed by public policy.
These days, however, training in computers should not wait until university. Every student should know what a computer is, how it functions, and (more importantly) how to discuss their problem to be solved with a computer programmer. Although I do not expect that all students will become computer professionals, they should be able to judge roughly whether the problem is large or small and be able (with some help) to judge the cost of solving the problem.
It does not have to be expensive to teach these simple things. Many schools already have computer systems available for students. If they do not, then a computer as small and inexpensive as the Raspberry Pi may be fitted with one of the ARM distributions on the Raspberry Pi website to allow students to experience a computer environment.
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