Motivate kids/development

(bright music) - So if I had to give some advice to parents of young school age children that may want to get into development, I would say to you it is very strongly encouraged to teach your children programming. And I think that in the upcoming generation, programming is gonna become a skill that people will need to have. Early childhood is the best time to allow kids to start grasping those concepts. - When I work with kids I think one of the things that I tell them and tell their parents a lot is that it's a very creative field. I think people forget that. And I think parents think it's very technical. There's so much fun you can have with code. You can build, I always tell them code is magic fairy dust. You can build things. You can create things. You can even create money with it. There's nothing you can't do with code. - You can do that on your home computer, of course, or you might search out after school programs, Boys and Girls Club. Many organizations in communities have some after school programs that offer clubs for students. And if they don't and you know something about programming, computer science, start a club. - If you have kids that are passionate about video games, you really should consider getting them into making video games. Because you can take something that you're passionate about and people will pay you for it. - It's always the question how do I do this? Or how do I make this game? That is the biggest inspiration. And so they'll ask me that and I know, even if I don't know how to do it, I know it's possible so I'll figure it out. And just knowing that it's possible for them to create this thing that they have in their head, when they get that idea in their head it's like I can do this? It's just so inspirational and finding the thing that they wanna make and figuring out how to show them or how to teach them that it can be done is really so much fun. - Engage them in game development. There are so many different tools to use. One of them that you perhaps have heard about is Scratch. Not only does the child get to make stories and add sounds and pictures and everything else but as they're having fun they're not even really aware of some of the basic computer concepts that they're learning. - Introducing them to things in that way is a great way to go about it. But I think the key thing that it comes down to is you gotta pay attention to what your kids are interested in. So for me, I see this interest and I come alongside and say okay, you're interested in this. Let's open this up. Let's show you how it can be fun. Let's show you what things you can do here that cultivate that interest. But if your kid doesn't have an interest in it, pursue their other interests. Tech is great. I love it. I work in tech, obviously. But it's not the only career path there is. And so I think if we pay attention to what our kids are interested in and we follow those interests, we can certainly find plenty of resources that will help us guide our kids in that way. (bright music)