Part of the Digital Skills Bootcamps and Women in ICT Events 2022 initiative of eSkills Malta Foundation, Ascend Consulting will be delivering six Emerging Technologies Familiarisation Days for girls aged 12-14, being the age when they start crystallising their further study and career choices.
This activity is intended to follow upon and address some of the findings of the “Survey of perceptions amongst students and educators on attractiveness and pursuit of digital careers by girls in Malta” implemented by Ascend Consulting and sponsored by eSkills Malta Foundation in 2021. Specifically, that:
- a minority of girls are attracted by a career in ICT or in the Digital Sector,
- the vast majority of the girls are not really aware of the difference between ICT and Digital Sector careers, particularly the wide scope of the latter, as well as
- the majority of the girls do not know about women who work in ICT or Digital Sector jobs.
In this sense, these Emerging Technologies Familiarisation Days are aimed to familiarise the girls with 4 different fast emerging technologies, make them aware of how these integrate with Information and Communications Technologies and where/how do they fit within the wide Digital Sector (e.g. in terms of application areas). The 4 emerging technologies in focus will be:
- Internet of Things,
- Biometrics,
- Augmented reality,
- Natural language processing.
Each Emerging Technologies Familiarisation Day will be structured as a 6-hours digital bootcamp activity, with interactive, practical, entertaining and engaging training sessions. These will be delivered by 5 women experts in and working with these emerging technologies, their developers or integrators. The girls will thus be not only introduced to these emerging technologies and their application areas, but will be also exposed to women role models in these fields. To allow for adequate opportunity for engagement and participation, each digital bootcamp will be held with around 22 girls.
Ascend Consulting plans to organise these 6 Emerging Technologies Familiarisation Days in collaboration with various schools and other education organisations in Malta, over the period July to November 2022. Hence, both during the Skola Sajf period and during the normal scholastic year. The aim is to select 6 different schools or other education organisations, with whom the exact date for each bootcamp will be afterwards agreed.
Trainers, training programme, content, materials and attendance certificates will be provided by Ascend Consulting with the sponsorship of eSkills Malta Foundation.
The hosts are expected to provide in-kind contribution by offering a convenient venue and equipment (projector and screen) for the digital bootcamp, announce it to the target group, register and select the participating girl students and appoint at least one of its teachers as class supervisor.
Schools interested to host and offer to their girl students one of these Emerging Technologies Familiarisation Days are required to express their interest in this sense by emailing Anamaria Magri Pantea, Ascend Consulting Managing Consultant, on anamaria@ascendconsulting.eu. This should be done as soon as possible, but not later than 30th June 2022. Selection of host schools will be done on a first come first served basis.