First Dell- Project Hope National Youth 21st Century Skills Competition Held in Beijing On August 9th, 200 teachers and students from 13 cities and Hong Kong region gathered in Beijing for “2012 Dell Powering the Possible Summer Camp” & “First Dell-Project Hope National Youth 21st Century Skills Competition” jointly organized by China Youth Development Foundation and Dell. This is the first 21st century skill training program in China for children of migrant workers, and is also the first Scratch Competition to provide a free platform for children from both rural and underserved communities to have access to the most advanced technology, and to acquire the 21st century skills that they require for future workforce competition.
Scratch might not be a familiar term to most of people. It is an open source program developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology for students aged over 8 in primary and junior high school. It adopts a block building method to “stack” programs and achieves program writing by dragging-and-dropping pre-defined program modules.
This year’s Competition adopted the theme of “Healthy Growth, Safe Living” to address frequent geological hazards and safety issues including traffic and food. Being encouraged to find hidden safety hazards around them and use innovative thinking and IT skills to put forward their solutions, students could come up with their own theme, creativity and display format of their Scratch projects based on their understanding of “safety”, “life” and “growth”. Dong Qi Ba Yi School from Deyang Sichuan and Bai Nian Migrant Workers’ Children School from Nanjing Jiangsu finally won the championship, and will represent Project Hope to visit Hong Kong’s Creative and Technology Center in November, to interact and exchange with outstanding student delegates in Hong Kong.
Michael Yang Chao, president of Dell Greater China, expressed the idea that improving the children’s capability in observing and thinking, and putting forward a practical solution with IT technology and logic language are considered the most important thing in the half- year training.
With accelerating urbanization in China, education of migrant workers’ children has become an increasingly salient problem. How to provide them with education facilities and environment that come into terms with modern practices and how to compensate for the huge gap in education due to community differences have become a common concern for education department, enterprises, charity organizations and even the whole society.
As for how to help children in underserved areas and narrow the education gap, Dell has its own determination which is to improve children’s learning and innovation ability through the advanced science and technology, promoting youth in life and professional skill of the all-round development. Thus, Dell and China Youth Foundation cooperated to donate goods and cash over 28 million to the Chinese education field, and established 169 Dell computer learning center. The 21st Century skills include the knowledge of IT technology, capabilities in learning and innovation, and living and vocational skills according to Michael Yang Chao. With a user-friendly interface, Scratch is helpful in inspiring the interests, and further promoting the application of computer and IT technology.
The Scratch Project has been carried out at 40 schools across 18 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in to provide free programming training to more than 30,000 students from less developed areas, so as to improve their innovation, team work and computer skills. Yao Wen, Deputy Secretary-General of China Youth Development Foundation emphasized the importance of project expansion to more rural schools and also called for support from enterprises and the society for more resources and professionals.
