Teens Tech Careers

T he iPod generation of kids       has made its way. In this case,    and teens are by far the        the vehicle for this               most tech savvy thus far.       accomplishment is an educational                                         outreach program from IBM.         During my teenage, through the                                           mid-eighties in India, we hardly      In the US, of course, we have an   had access to computers. I took a     Affluenza generation growing up    computer class in 1987, at which      on computers from the age of 3 or  the instructor used to give us        4.                                 demos on a real machine about                                           once a week, and we never             It is, therefore, somewhat         actually programmed on a PC.          disheartening to read this post    Instead, we wrote algorithms and      by Laura Tiffany, on the career    pseudocode, and were tested on        preferences of today s teens:      the logic of our programs.             The teens surveyed believe that                                        innovation will take care of such  During my recent India trip, we       issues as clean water (91          visited a village school that my      percent), world hunger (89         great-great-grand-father had          percent), disease (88 percent),    established in our ancestral          pollution reduction (89 percent)   village in Rajarhat, near             and energy conservation (82        Calcutta, where he grew up. The       percent). They also believe        head-master took us around and        gasoline and CDs are on their way  explained that they have 10           out; 33 percent think gas-powered  computers, and students from 8th      cars will be gone by 2015 and CDs  grade on learn data-structures,       will be just a memory within 10    algorithms, AND they actually         years. But when asked about their  write programs in C. I was both       future career choices, science,    impressed and fascinated by how       business and engineering weren t   far into the fabric of India - IT     at the top of the list. Those      honors went to arts and medicine      boys and girls (24 and 4 percent,  (17 percent each);                    respectively).                     health-care/medicine careers were                                        more attractive to girls than         Well, the numbers are very         boys (25 percent vs. 9 percent).      different in India and China. Is   Engineering did come in third         the US, then, leaving it up to     overall at 14 percent, with a         the Asians to do the inventing     similarly wide difference between     and innovating?                    Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com Silicon Valley Entrepreneur and Strategy Consultant Sramana Mitra writes about Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Emerging Technology, Market Moves, and sundry other topics in her Blog "Sramana Mitra on Strategy". Read more of her writings at www.sramanamitra.com.