What do children learn at Shkolla Digjitale?

It is quite clear that children at Shkolla Digjitale learn programming, you may have understood this from the website or from marketing campaigns, however just the word programming is not enough for many parents, considering that programming is a broad topic.

What do children learn? This is the question that the staff of Shkolla Digjitale tries every day to explain in the simplest way to all interested parents. For this reason, I as CEO of Shkolla Digjitale have decided to write this article, to make the understanding easier for all parents who have not yet managed to visit the school or talk to us.

I do not want to dwell on topics such as whether it is a burden, or the reasons why children should learn since these have been covered in many previous articles (you can read from here). I want to focus more on the details of what children learn with us.

To be a programmer, engineer, IT or any professional, it is not enough to have only professional knowledge. It is something I have always repeated even in the professional trainings I had with adults. The profession is only 50% of success. The rest has to do with general education.

What is meant by general education? Family education is not enough to be a professional, professional education is also needed. In Shkolla Digjitale children learn how to behave in a work environment, how to cooperate among themselves and what team success or punishment means. A good number of children initially did not have the sense of team… They have now started to learn how to function as a single entity, to have team spirit and to protect each other.

The curriculum plan through which children learn is designed so that from time to time children are challenged with specific problems. At least every day during the lesson they have a problem that is harder than all the others. There, children's patience is tested to see how long they can endure trying to solve a problem. It is very important that they learn patience during work. Not always are things in life simple or predictable as we wish, so it is essential that they are ready at any time to face problems that take more time than they initially think.

The rest of the learning besides programming is technological culture. What is meant by technological culture in this case? It is a miserable state… when you ask over 100 students if they have ever heard in schools about digital security and in most cases you get a cold NO. To allow a child today to wander the internet without basic digital culture or without protection from materials inappropriate for their age is the same as placing a child in an Amazon jungle for the first time and letting them survive alone.

Internet risks is a topic that is covered every level at Shkolla Digjitale, where we teach children how to protect themselves and become aware of potential risks and harms that they can cause to themselves or their family. Moreover, they also learn digital education, which is similar to civic education where we teach children to be honest and dignified "digital citizens" considering that the longest time of humanity today is being lived digitally. This phenomenon, whether we like it or not, we cannot avoid, but we must educate ourselves.

Each level at Shkolla Digjitale is balanced. Children at Shkolla Digjitale learn how to create and control technology through programming, also learn technological history, learn digital culture and digital security. Above all, we are preparing children to have a cooperative spirit and to be mentally prepared for any challenge that may come their way in the future.

Darsej Rizaj CEO/Teacher