Don’t just consume, produce!

During my youth I was a tech consumer rather than tech producer spending days playing on Sega and Nintendo consoles rather than designing/coding games; later surfing the web rather than designing/coding sites and using computer programs rather than making them. In my opinion I was not the only one of my generation to do this. Consuming is much easier than producing.

Technology continues to improve and along its path it has made it easier to consume and easier to produce. Video and photo editing can now be done on smart phones, then shared with the world. Online profiles and websites can be created in a matter of minutes giving people a voice and a place to discuss their thoughts. Even producing coding has become easier with more resources than ever before being available both online and offline.

What is worrying is that organisations seem more stuck on teaching citizens how to digitally consume rather than digitally produce; yes it is important to be able to use technology but surely we should also be teaching the basics of producing on the same technology. To quote the old saying “give a person a fish, you’ve fed them for a day. Teach them to fish and you’ve fed them for life”. Let’s introduce people to both aspects of consuming and producing, letting them experience others products and giving them the ability to share their ideas/creations.

Limiting people to just consuming is not only going to hamper them, it will eventually hamper their community and their social circles. Give people the skills to produce and who knows what applications, websites or technology break throughs might be created.

If you are looking to learn to code, build a website or an app here are some sites that might be able to help:

https://www.codeclub.org.uk

https://coderdojo.com

https://www.freecodecamp.org/

https://www.codecademy.com

https://mva.microsoft.com

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