We live in a potential golden age for technology education:
- Hardware is ridiculously cheap and powerful and widely available
- Inexpensive educational computers such as the BBC micro bit and Raspberry Pi are widely available along with associated educational materials; these devices are easily interfaced to the real world, and can often be programmed at a very low level or high level as desired
- Overall, robotics and real-world computing is cheaper and more accessible than it has ever been
- FPGAs are ridiculously cheap and powerful and allow you to explore processor and digital hardware design
- Nearly every computer, smartphone, or tablet contains a web browser that can be programmed in JavaScript, webasm, and dozens of other languages that compile to JavaScript or webasm; web apps can display 2D, 3D and vector-path graphics, generate sound, and interact with all sorts of input devices
- Nearly every computer, smartphone, or tablet has a Python implementation as well
- Free and open source software is widely available
- Free and open source game engines are widely available
- Games are often moddable and many contain built-in level editors
- Source code of almost any type of software you can imagine, from operating system kernels to compilers and libraries to databases to to web browsers to scientific computing to games and productivity software is widely available
- Billions of people have internet access
- Tons of free and often high-quality educational materials are available from universities, khan academy, and many other sources on youtube, on github, and all over the web
- Many books including textbooks and tutorials are available for free as PDFs or readable on the web
etc.
The materials are out there, but the challenge is empowering people to find and make use of them.
- Hardware is ridiculously cheap and powerful and widely available
- Inexpensive educational computers such as the BBC micro bit and Raspberry Pi are widely available along with associated educational materials; these devices are easily interfaced to the real world, and can often be programmed at a very low level or high level as desired
- Overall, robotics and real-world computing is cheaper and more accessible than it has ever been
- FPGAs are ridiculously cheap and powerful and allow you to explore processor and digital hardware design
- Nearly every computer, smartphone, or tablet contains a web browser that can be programmed in JavaScript, webasm, and dozens of other languages that compile to JavaScript or webasm; web apps can display 2D, 3D and vector-path graphics, generate sound, and interact with all sorts of input devices
- Nearly every computer, smartphone, or tablet has a Python implementation as well
- Free and open source software is widely available
- Free and open source game engines are widely available
- Games are often moddable and many contain built-in level editors
- Source code of almost any type of software you can imagine, from operating system kernels to compilers and libraries to databases to to web browsers to scientific computing to games and productivity software is widely available
- Billions of people have internet access
- Tons of free and often high-quality educational materials are available from universities, khan academy, and many other sources on youtube, on github, and all over the web
- Many books including textbooks and tutorials are available for free as PDFs or readable on the web
etc.
The materials are out there, but the challenge is empowering people to find and make use of them.