Empowering girls and boys in Information Technology (Hangarau Whakaaturanga) was the aim of our river quality gaming and coding workshop in Hastings. Students were tasked to empower tamariki and whanau with the need to better manage our waterways and were using a games platform to achieve this. This unique workshop allowed us to reach female students and introduce them to the art of coding. There is a global challenge to raise the proportion of women working in the IT sector. Opportunities are being re-framed to make it more attractive for women to enter into this field.

AbsoluteIT reported in 2017 that only 20% of students enrolled in a Bachelor degree in IT were women.

The students demonstrated tremendous resilience as they embarked on learning this new skill set. Students overcame challenges set up by Dave from GAMEFROOT; pushed through long hours and made some great progress toward outstanding games in the end. By promoting such programs, PTC hopes to raise the number of students keen on entering programming fields and especially the number of young women across NZ.

Tom Warren in The Verge, March 2019 quotes Google as saying that ‘the future of gaming is not a box…but a place. Just like how humans have built stadiums for sports over hundreds of years, Google believes it’s building a virtual stadium…for the future of games to be played anywhere. You won’t need an expensive gaming PC or a dedicated game console. Instead, you’ll just need access to Google’s Chrome browser to instantly play games on a phone, tablet, PC, or TV.

If this is the future then ensuring we are investing in gaming and coding training for our rangatahi is an absolute necessity.