Encouraging Children into Testing
Kari Kakkonen
Dragons Out Oy
This eBook explains that we should get children to start with software testing because otherwise we only get coding skills started at an early age, and as we know, software testing is also needed. This eBook will look at how children learn and teaching testing through fantasy for children. What kind of measures can be used: playing, remembering, identifying with, exploring? The Book presents one solution, a fantasy book about software testing for children. This is my book that I wrote. I go through some examples of how fantasy can represent software testing: dragons are defects, knights are developers and testers… I also describe my journey of writing and publishing a testing book for children – something unique. At the end, we discuss different defects people have experienced and transform them into dragons. Everyone gets to draw a dragon/defect!
Society needs these IT and testing skills. There is a persistent lack of both programming and testing skills on the job market. As one solution, we need to make software testing skills available to children, too. This will have positive long-term impact on availability of testing skills. So, we need to bring software testing into the attention of children, who are interested in code. If they get into coding, their better understanding of testing will help them to be better developers. They also might become software testers, adding into the honourable profession of software testers.
For some children, and adults, too, software testing may be their best, most viable way into the fascinating world of information technology. They should have solid software testing skills. It all starts with awareness and understanding of software testing and teaching testing in different ways.
Key Takeaways:
- We need to educate children about testing, too. Coding skills are not enough.
- Children, and people in general, learn in a number of ways – why not make it fun?
- There is power in analogies, by understanding something simple, you can start understanding something more complex.
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About Me!
Kari has M.Sc. in Industrial Management with Minor in Information Technology from Aalto University (aalto.fi). He has also studied in University of Wisconsin-Madison (wisc.edu) in United States. He has ISTQB Expert Level Test Management Full, Agile Tester, Test Automation Engineer, Scrum Master, SAFe and DASA DevOps certificates, and works mostly with agile testing, lean, test automation, DevOps and AI. He has been working with testing tool implementations, software development and testing processes, software development and testing projects, consulting, and training since 1996. He has worked for various industries, including banking, telecom, embedded software, public sector, commerce. Kari Kakkonen is author and CEO of Dragons Out Oy, creating a fantasy book to teach software testing to children. Kari Kakkonen is working in Finland at Knowit (knowit.fi), which is a Nordic ICT services company known for testing consultancy and software development, and other innovative ICT related services. Kari is Secretary of ISTQB (istqb.org), Treasurer of Finnish Software Testing Board FiSTB (fistb.fi), Kari has been included in IT–magazine “Tivi” 100 most influential people listing. Kari is co-author of Agile Testing Foundations –book. Kari is a singer, snowboarder, kayaker, husband and dad, most of all. You can find Kari in Twitter (twitter.com/kkakkonen) and LinkedIn (fi.linkedin.com/in/karikakkonen).