Chances are you are already over the fear elicited by the novel Coronavirus called COVID-19.
Your next spot of bother is the fact that the children are eating too much of your food. They are breaking things. They are fighting. They wake you up from your sleep without notice. To just mention their expected routine.
What if we can turn that ample time and energy into the best thing that has happened to them this year? What if you use this time to nudge your child into a fulfilling career and prepared them for today and also tomorrow?
What if the career is also something that your child can do at home and earn foreign currency even in abnormal times of a total lockdown as we are in now?
That is, your children can make money with this skill without even stepping out of their room.
And this is so simple that even a nine-year-old child can start. In fact, I’ve started with my absent-minded nine-year-old son.
What is this?
Computer programming. Specifically, Web applications technology. Or to put it simply, building websites.
When I was in school, designing websites helped me to earn money to supplement the studentship that I was getting from the university.
Although I will concede that I was already in graduate school when I started, those who helped me to ramp up my web development skills were students – children.
Before then, I thought I already knew how to design sites. But one day during a presentation at our research cluster, the new website for the group was launched.
It was a beautiful site – a complete opposite of the dull things I was designing. So I requested to know who designed it. It turned out our own undergraduate students did.
So I ran to them to learn their skills and the tools they used. From that moment on, my career in web design took off.
But with your children, we are not going to start with anything fancy. Our goal is to get the children started on the career and become experts in web design. Yes, experts.
Who is an expert? Collins Dictionary says “an expert is a person who is very skilled at doing something or who knows a lot about a particular subject.”
So we will make your child know a lot about web development – a lot more than the average person.
Adults can participate too. But you have to forget your inhibitions and learn like children.
How easy is it?
Let me prove to you that you can do it. The only thing you need to start HTML scripting is this and I want you to write it on a piece of paper or trace it in the air:
<html>
</html>
Have you written that? That is the only thing you need to get started.
So we are going to start the children on HTML. HTML is not a programming language but a scripting language. It is what you use to structure your webpages. So it is very important. This will take us about two weeks. After this, students get a certificate but the certificate is optional.
Then we use another two weeks for CSS. This is the scripting language we use to beautify and pretty up a website. After this, you also get a certificate.
Then we transition to the content management system or CMS. This is what you use to design websites even if you don’t know any programming language.
Using a CMS, you can produce a great, amazing and functional website in an instant. So if using a CMS can be so effective and if you can use CMS without any knowledge of programming, why would I trouble you to learn HTML and CSS first?
Two reasons. Because some times you may be required to tweak your webpages when using CMS. Without knowledge of the underlying languages, you wouldn’t be able to do much.
Another reason is that you wouldn’t feel confident in calling yourself a web developer if you didn’t know HTML and CSS – and to some extent, JavaScript.
JavaScript
We can’t predict how long the Coronavirus is going to last. So if we had time, we are going to learn JavaScript programming. JavaScript is the programming language that will add behaviour to your web pages. If you learn this well, then you are likely going to earn more than your parents very quickly. You also get the opportunity to work for big companies anywhere in the world.
How much can you make? Itworld.com says:
“It’s no secret that software developers make good money these days. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average annual salary for a software developer in the United States is close to $100,000. … It turns out that, while making $200,000 a year as a developer is unusual, it’s not unheard of.”
Even if your child doesn’t want to be a software developer, programming skills can help them develop the computational thinking skills that will help them in other vocations. That’s why some coding skill is required for other professions.
Grasshopper wrote: “According to research by market analytics firm Burning Glass, most of the open jobs in the top income quartile (paying $57,000 or more annually) want applicants to have at least some computer coding knowledge or skill.”
You see you can never go wrong with coding.
How much is this? Absolutely free. If Atiku gives 50 million and Abdussamad gives one billion naira to help with efforts to combat COVID-19, this is my own little contribution. But we don’t turn away donations to help with hosting content and payment for bandwidth.
How do you join?
Click here to join the WhatsApp group HTML for Kids:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/LWrJYhsyJjlFGeuS6BCI8x
If you are reading the hard copy of this newspaper, go to the online version and click on the link.
