Importance of ICT Skills for Kids: Why should kids learn ICT skills?

Have you been wondering about the importance of ICT skills for kids, would you want to know why children should learn ICT skills like coding?

We all want our kids and children to gain the life skills they need to achieve academic, personal, and eventually career success. But with so many important skills and extracurriculars available for them to learn, it can be hard to know what to prioritize.

Why should kids learn ICT skills?

It has become so important for that we halp kids learn ICT skills. Information and communication technology (ICT) touches virtually every aspect of modern life –  from everyday tasks such as sending out emails and making phone calls to using programming languages in the workplace.

It is a driver of change in the global economy, creating opportunities for innovation, new products and entrepreneurship. ICT, and the digital economy it has created, is here to stay.

For today’s youth, therefore, ICT knowledge is vital for success, determining their ability to participate in society as well as contributing to their employability.

The ability of pupils to confidently use ICT from a young age is an essential core skill and in this day and age it is as important as being able to confidently read and write.

Digital technology has a central role to play in children’s education and impacts upon virtually all areas of learning in the curriculum, making ICT a cross-curricular skill

The digital divide

The pace of technological development in the new knowledge economy has created more powerful ICTs and rising demand on workers with advanced (ICT) skills.

However, just because the technology is available does not mean everyone can get the training and develop skills in it. Those who cannot access necessary information and training, and cannot keep up with the technological revolution will be left behind and vulnerable as the knowledge economy has already imposed chaos in unskilled and semi-skilled employment

Digital skills are those that allow children and adolescents to become ‘digitally literate,’ able to not only use and understand technology but also to increasingly create and share digital content, building knowledge and solving problems and using digital technology.

ICT skills are those digital skills that focus on activities related to information and communication technology.

To be relevant in this digital age, your kids need to learn ict skills like coding and programming, computer appreciation and other basic ICT skills, robotics, website design, mobile app development, graphics design, video editing, motion graphics and animation.

Unfortunately, most schools in Nigeria do not teach these skills, some that claim to teach them do not employ skills ICT teachers who know what they are doing.

This is one of the reasons why kids and tech was created to help kids learn ICT skills that will help them to become useful to themselves and society in the future.

When is the right time to teach kids technology?

Quite often, our kids are only exposed to the end-user part of technology. Most watch YouTube, play video games, play on their smartphones and download music from Alexa, but what if we could teach our children to create new technology that will catapult them into digital old age with ease?

Learning to code is just like teaching a child a new language.

If you start introducing complex skills, such as computer coding, to kids whilst they are young, they’ll consume it quickly, utilise it flexibly and continue to foster it for decades to come.

Now is the time to start

From smart cars that drive themselves to augmented reality and advanced computer algorithms serving personalized content, we live in a digital fuelled era. What is fresh news today will be lost in the ether tomorrow.

Due to living in an increasingly digitalized world, ICT skills like computer coding is important for kids for the future.. These transferrable skills enable kids to learn relevant and competitive skills whilst developing a problem-solving mindset from an early age.

Technology awaits invention and this is why at KIDS AND TECH we offer computer coding classes for kids, evening and weekend classes and also holiday and summer camps for children aged between 4 to 18 years.

We aim to create engaging and enriching learning experiences that empower the next generation of tech leaders and makers of the future.

You can browse through all our current tech and ICT skills program