How to help a high school student start learning technology: a step-by-step plan
What “building blocks” should you use to create an educational route that will help you successfully start your career?
Step 1. Choose a direction
Before deciding on a profession and education, you need to help the student explore his interests - in his favorite activity you can find the key to a future career. We wrote in detail about how to explore your child’s interests and choose a direction you like, in the previous chapter: there is not only expert advice, but also a description of several popular IT specialties.
If you and your child have not yet understood the IT field, this will help you evaluate the job market and choose an approximate path - for example, learning skills that are suitable for an IT specialist in the humanities or an IT technician. You can also learn more about IT professions on the blog of the Academy of Artificial Intelligence: there is a video about the main professions in AI, about roles in a team, and other useful videos.
Tours to an IT company will help you learn more. They are useful primarily for emotional experience. It’s one thing to sit at a computer in computer science class or go to a robotics club. It’s quite another to see people making a social network or a popular game at school. Such a meeting will help you understand the conditions under which IT specialists work and how to become one of them. Perhaps the tours will help the teenager get into the flow of events that will lead to his dream job.
Universities and institutes also hold open days. There they talk about faculties and departments, professions of graduates and answer questions from schoolchildren.
What kind of excursions are there: usually at open days they don’t just show jobs and talk about themselves, but at the same time they conduct career workshops or intellectual games. They are conducted both offline and virtually.
How to get: Companies post information about excursions and open days on official websites and social networks - and you can also write a letter or call. Maybe your request will encourage them to come up with events for schoolchildren. Subscribe to newsletters from universities.
Step 2. Create an educational track
When a student has realized which direction he is interested in, he can create an educational and professional route—identify the “bricks” that will form the road to the goal.
First you need to understand your point A, answer the questions: “Who am I? What am I interested in?” Then find your point B: for example, your desired lifestyle, income. And then understand what practices are needed to move to point B: courses, master classes, educational programs of universities and colleges, internships.
Let's take a 10th grade student who wants to become a data scientist. Among the “building blocks” in his route may be: individual lessons with a tutor in computer science, an educational program in the field of “Applied Mathematics”, online courses in machine learning.
Online courses are one of the standard “building blocks” on the path to a career. In the first chapter we dismantled the myth that IT is only for large cities or wealthy families. Online learning, unlike standard education at universities and colleges, does not require moving to another city or large financial investments.
What types of courses are there: free educational projects are organized by large companies. For example, Sber and the “Investment to the Future” Charitable Foundation created the “Artificial Intelligence Academy for Schoolchildren.” They teach online: there are introductory lessons, a course on machine learning and training tasks. Sber also conducts online bootcamps — training projects on the topic of AI - and accepts students from 17 years old to School 21.
You can also enroll in free «Code of the Future» courses for students in grades 8–11. There, the guys learn programming languages: Python, Java, C++, C#, PHP and others. You can study both offline in Moscow and online from any city. There are 100 thousand places in the courses.
How to get there: go to the project websites and register - or submit an application if enrollment is limited.
How to combine school with other studies
It is important not to overload the teenager. Here's what advice teachers give:
- It is better to limit yourself to two clubs or classes - and distribute the time so that the student has a couple of free days during the week to relax. This is necessary so that the child can just stay at home and spend time as he wants.
- To take a break from the computer and gadgets, you can alternate IT studies with another activity. Sports and choreography are good for unloading your head and relieving nervous tension. And creative hobbies, like drawing or playing musical instruments, develop fine motor skills and cognitive abilities: attention, memory, learning ability..
- Listen to your child and be flexible. Pay attention to how he feels about additional activities: does he come home happy and energetic, or exhausted and not wanting anything? Clubs should fill your life, not exhaust you. If a child says for several weeks in a row that he no longer wants to participate in the club, do not put pressure on him.
Step 3. Participate in competitions
Practice is the key in IT. A teenager can try to make his first website, mobile application, simple game, or write code to solve an applied problem while still at school.
Competitions, hackathons, olympiads and project competitions are a good opportunity to practice. They often give other bonuses:
- Children get to know potential employers: representatives of large companies are often invited to competitions.
- Communication with like-minded people (online or offline) will teach you to work in a team - this is valued in IT.
- You can win an internship, admission benefits, equipment or a cash prize.
Hackathons
Why they are useful:: you can improve many skills, including critical thinking, creativity, teamwork and pitching - that is, presenting the results of your work. It is also an ideal environment for networking: participants meet like-minded people and potential employers. It happens that hackathons award cash prizes, certificates, or grants for studying at online schools. Another serious bonus is that you can receive an invitation to an internship.
What are they: each hackathon is focused on a specific area of knowledge - programming language, operating system, type of application, and others. For example, at a geoinformatics hackathon, schoolchildren develop mobile applications, bots, services or games using mapping services, geospatial data and geoanalytics. There are hackathons dedicated to artificial intelligence, 3D modeling, network design, cybersecurity and other areas.
Hackathons are held not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in the regions. There are also many online hackathons. For example, the Academy of Artificial Intelligence conducts remote machine learning hackathons.
How to find: There are several websites , that collect information about hackathons, but most of the events there are more suitable for students and those already working. Therefore, it’s worth looking for current hackathons for schoolchildren by typing phrases like “programming hackathon for schoolchildren” into a search engine. You can also follow the social networks of educational projects, where they can publish information about hackathons and other activities.
Olympiads and contests
Why they are useful: Olympiads often give you the right to preferential admission to a university or other benefits. For example, a competition from the “AI Academy for Schoolchildren” and the National Technology Olympiad gives the right to preferential admission; you can also win an invitation to an internship at Sberbank in the field of “Machine Learning,” cash prizes and other bonuses.
In project competitions, students conduct research or work on a project throughout the year, and at the end present their results at a conference. Winners may receive benefits upon admission, but usually less significant than at the Olympiad. The main advantage of such competitions is the experience of real research activities, in some competitions under the guidance of a curator from the university.
There are different types: public - they are organized by the Ministry of Education and universities - and private, from foundations and companies.
Here are a few more Russian Olympiads:
- Olympiads for schoolchildren from ITMO University in computer science and mathematics.
- The “Highest Standard” Olympiad for students in grades 9–11 from the Higher School of Economics, it is held in various fields, not only within school subjects.
- Olympiad for schoolchildren of St. Petersburg State University in computer science.
- All-Russian Big Olympiad “Art - Technology - Sports”.
- Olympiad «Lomonosov» from Moscow State University.
- Olympiad «Trajectory of the Future» for students and schoolchildren from 13 years old.
Open Source
You can also get practice in Open Source projects: these are open source projects where anyone can suggest changes, add a feature, or fix a bug. That is, a novice programmer helps other IT specialists improve their project for free. This way you can quickly improve your technical skills and English.
What are they: the word “open source” usually refers to projects for developers. But you can act on the same principle in other niches. For example, an aspiring motion designer might invite well-known illustrators to animate their work. Designer Ivan Bannikov told , how he tried this approach to boost his portfolio - after completing several works, he received paid orders.
How to find it: Programmers need to go to GitHub. First you need to find a project that you like in some way. And it’s better to start working with the so-called good first issue - these are tasks that, according to the authors of the project, even a novice developer can cope with.
Step 4. Get an internship
An internship in an IT company is the best environment for development that will provide emotional and practical experience. A teenager goes to a real office or works remotely - he is in the thick of the work process, surrounded by experienced people, solving real problems. This is also a strong line on a resume. Even if the intern is not hired by the company where he interned, another employer will appreciate the experience.
Where to apply: university or online courses
Many graduates face a dilemma: what to choose, classical higher education or online learning. Statistics speak about the results of the choice: over the past ten years, the number of students at Russian universities has decreased by 3 million; in the 2020–2021 academic year there were slightly more than 4 million. But the alternative education sector is growing: in 2021, 18 million Russians took online courses.
The topic of higher education and its alternatives was discussed at the ITMO conference in the spring of 2022. Here's what experts think about choosing between colleges and online courses.
One thing that speaks in favor of university education is that in some IT specialties it is impossible to do without fundamental training. In addition, there is a trend towards lifelong learning in the world, and the fundamental knowledge and structured thinking that the university provides will help you master any specialty in the future, says Alexander Kapitonov, dean of ITMO’s Faculty of Infocommunication Technologies.
A university can indeed provide a good base, but the IT field is changing very quickly, and these skills and competencies will have to be mastered after higher education - including through online learning, other experts note.
There are two important things. First, there must be a strong fundamental base. In IT, this means mathematical training, knowledge of algorithms, English and the programming skill itself - no matter what language. All other skills and competencies change very quickly.
Secondly, it is important not just to study, but not to lose interest in what is happening in the world. All career success comes when you are interested in doing what you do.
If you concentrate on fundamental things for the first couple of years at university, it will definitely not be wasted time. During this time, an understanding of what you want to do begins to mature. It can change radically. But if you have a good base, even if in three years you go to a completely different area, that’s normal
Despite the advantages of higher education, not everyone can take advantage of them: in 2021, the Rabota.ru website surveyed 5,000 graduates of Russian universities. It turned out that 43% of them had never worked in their specialty. This happens because higher education is often obtained “for show.” A HSE study for the 2019–2020 academic year showed that about 20% of schoolchildren choose a university based on the principle of “where the Unified State Exam scores are enough,” and 21% cited close location to home as the reason.
Online courses have the advantage over universities in flexibility and practicality: they usually last less than a standard bachelor's degree program, are cheaper or even free, training is not tied to time and place, and the information in the courses is often more relevant than the university curriculum.
Some ITMO conference experts believe that a higher education diploma is not important when deciding whether to hire a person in IT or not. A “diploma” often helps you get an interview: if a person is from a good university, he will probably be invited. But what position he will get after the interview, and whether he will get it at all, depends on the results of the interview and the candidate’s actual practical skills, and not on the diploma.
All this shows how important it is to help a student understand his interests and give him the opportunity to choose a specialty without pressure. If you enroll in a university or take a course just for show, you can waste time and money.
What to remember
- 1 Choosing a direction in IT is based on the interests of the child - pay attention to his hobby, it can become the key to education and career.
- 2 When the choice is made, think with your child what point B he wants to be at: what lifestyle he sees for himself in the future, what salary and field of work. Based on this, make a list of the “bricks” that will form the road to this future: clubs, courses, educational projects, tutors
- 3 When making plans for education, do not forget about practice: theory is good, but practical skills will help you find your first part-time job faster.
- 4 A university is capable of providing fundamental knowledge, especially if you carefully choose a specialty and do not study just for the sake of getting a degree. You can get the missing practical skills and study an unfamiliar specialty through online courses.
