Hello!!
I was recently approached by the school and asked if I would be interested in doing career day.
My kids overheard the conversation and sure enough they got all excited and encouraged me to do it.
Now I have to give a 1hr speech in front of kids in grade 5,6 and 7 and not sure what I should do.
The teacher told me I could use the computer room if I wanted to and do groups of students if easier.
OR, I can do a presentation for all the students in the gym and have access to the Smart Boards.
Smart boards, unlike when I was in school, is a newer sophisticated chalk board / computer of sorts.
Anyways, I dabble in a bit of everything, from systems administrations to web development. Most of which kids that age, may find somewhat boring and I’m looking for some suggestions and thoughts to make it more interesting and not a yawning experience. Maybe I should do a screen presentation but then I thought those were always kind of boring, so maybe I could do something a little more interactive and encourage-able.
I’m just looking for some ideas to help my own brainstorming.
If you’ve some experience or suggestions by all means share 
Thanks in advance!
Very cool @OWMLabs, that’s a great way to give something back and inspire kids, good luck with the presentation! 
Here are some quick ideas that come to mind:
- Show the kids how software is all around us. Begin by talking about games and examples they will know, but then get into how software is also in our homes, appliances, TVs, in our cars etc…
- Explain how software is part of all our lives and how much it has changed our lives.
- Encourage them that anyone can code!
On that last point, code.org has some awesome content just for kids to quickly get them thinking about and learning about code. Here’s a couple of videos you could show them in your talk:
You could follow-up this video with the video below…
…and then you could get some volunteers from the audience to help you code using some of the characters from the Frozen movie (or via the Disney Infinity Play Lab which may be better for your slightly older audience). Not only will it show that coding is easy, but it can also be fun.
Perhaps you could then share with them how great a career it is as a developer as there are a lot of jobs, positions are always in demand, there are opportunities to freelance and even work from home (or anywhere in the world!), and it’s also a great way to work for great companies and earn a great living.
Share some resources they could use to get started such as:
Maybe you could even share with them some of the best selling and popular items on CodeCanyon and describe some of the cool things they do and how many people around the world are making a living from making useful plugins and scripts and actually impacting other people’s lives around the world by providing/selling these kind of resources.
Let us know how it goes and maybe share a photo from the talk!
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Hello @scottwills!
Thank you for your encouragement and amazing resources shared!
The Disney Infinity Play Lab will work great into what I was planning.
I was amazed (and somewhat overwhelmed) to find how many resources were out there for children of all ages to learn coding in an easy, user-friendly, interactive environment that even my kids would really enjoy doing. I thought finding resources that would help me in relating to children of these age groups would be hard but I’m finding a treasure of information available.
Working hard on some ideas as I really want this to be a success. There’s so much in this industry and the opportunities are endless. Technology is all around us and now with some interesting ideas, I have some great ways to share and relate this to younger age groups.
I’ll do my best to share the presentation and perhaps some pictures
Thanks again!
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