The introduction of a mini-computer into New Zealand schools could mean the next Bill Gates is just as likely to emerge from Aro Valley as from Silicon Valley.
One hundred of the basic teaching computers - developed at Cambridge University and called a Raspberry Pi - are being gifted to New Zealand secondary schools by Kiwi software company Orion Health.
Orion's founder and majority owner, Ian McCrae, has been vocal in support of the fledgling digital technologies curriculum which focuses on teaching students to create computer systems rather than play with existing ones.
McCrae said there was a huge talent shortage in the computer science and information technology labour market which meant Kiwi companies were constantly looking overseas for suitable employees.
He said it was a no-brainer that kids should get into computer science because the job prospects were great and the information technology sector was the top-paying industry in New Zealand.
"As of today there's about 1000 IT jobs on Trade Me and about 44 for all the other science jobs put together, so this is where the jobs are," McCrae said.
"We should be training our kids in areas where there are jobs - this is how we hang on to our kids here in New Zealand."
Raspberry Pis are ideal for use in the school setting because they are cheap - about $50 - and easy to use, but can be manipulated more readily than the hardware that is usually found in the school lab.
McCrae said he believed interest in the IT curriculum would explode with the availability of the cheap computers and he was prepared to supply more of them alongside other sponsors, such as Hewlett Packard, which has already jumped on board.
To kick-start the initiative, McCrae announced the 2013 Codeworx Challenge in Auckland yesterday, which will require individual or team entrants to come up with an innovative programming solution using a Raspberry Pi computer.
Entry is open to every secondary school student in New Zealand, with a chance to win prizes and incentives including an internship at Orion Health.
Professor Tim Bell, of Canterbury University's computer science department, said the widening gap between the number of computer science graduates and the jobs available was bizarre.
"A lot of it is because students just don't appreciate what's possible," said Bell, who has been integral to the development of computer science standards into the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) framework.
"[The high level of consumer technology] almost immunises them to the possibility of creating the technology because there's so much amazing technology coming out that you assume that it's just being provided by a few amazing people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.
"But what they don't realise is that they're actually part of a huge company which employs thousands of very clever software engineers and computer scientists to develop things, and that this sort of thing is happening in New Zealand as well."
- ? Fairfax NZ News
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/8462714/Life-of-Pi-comes-to-secondary-schools
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