A special picture

This is a very special picture, because it is indicative of the heart of the CoderDojo philosophy. I received it a few months ago from a mother at the NSC CoderDojo in Cork. It was originally placed on the homepage slideshow, however many people missed the beautiful irony and context of the image.

This is the short message I received with the image…

“Hi Lindsay,

just thought I’d send you this nice photo.

this is our 8 year old who has been to Coder Dojo about 4 or 5 times, giving her grandfather who’s nearly 81 his first lesson in HTML.

Regards Bairbre.”

In todays world there is a growing gap in technological understanding between the young and an older generation, the growing ubiquity of technology can confound even the most tech savvy, and for those that grew in a time before digital it can be truly overwhelming. We all know the grandparent who is getting to grips with an Ipad for the first time, or more often a parent who struggles to understand a search engine results page.

Our children are learning faster than we can believe, and children are now the teachers of adults. It is literally humbling us all to listen in awe to the advice of young children as they explain the magic of technology unfurling around us.

Most importantly it allows opportunities as that in this picture. Bonding within families and within communities. A sense of excitement as the old are shown new things by the young. And hope that our youth do not have to be the technologically isolated individuals which some have envisioned. They can be social beings enjoying all the richness of life of previous generations, only enhanced by technology.

The context of this story was missed by many glancing at the home page and that is the reason that it warranted a blog post to give some more explanation to those that care.