How to Prepare Students for 21st- Century Tech Careers

Students need help from parents and teachers to help them envision themselves in an IT career. Recent research commissioned by the Creating IT Futures Foundation found that nearly all teens want a career, not just a job, and that teens expressed positive perceptions of IT, associating it with good pay, helping people and interesting work. Almost 90 percent of teens felt they could succeed in an IT career.

Another cost-effective means toward introducing more technology in the classroom is Raspberry Pi. The Illinois IT Learning Exchange launched a Raspberry Pi project with a two-fold goal — one, offer professional development sessions for teachers about Raspberry Pi technology and using it in classrooms, and two, to facilitate competitions to encourage student innovation and problem solving.

Raspberry Pi is a palm-sized, single-board computer developed by a non-profit foundation in the United Kingdom for the express purpose of promoting basic computer science education and skills development in schools at low cost — less than $100 per classroom for the device and accessories.

Millions of Raspberry Pis have been sold worldwide and are making their small-but-powerful presence known in STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — educational circles. At the White House’s fifth annual science fair in March, one student turned an old piano into a jukebox using a Raspberry Pi mini computer.