The challenge of chatting with the computer |Trade

Alfonso Torices Madrid

Spaniards and young people naturally drive mobile, tablets and computers.They are digital natives and move with skill for applications, chat or web, but the vast majorcommercial and other interests of technological giants-.In three words, they don't know how to program.

Francisco Vico, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Malaga, is convinced that the boy who in a few years is not initiated at least in the rudiments of computational language will suffer a new illiteracy.Similar to the one who decades ago did not know how to read or write or the one that is not handled today in English.Learning the language of the machines, says, will give the new generation competitive advantages in the professional, but will also expand its mental capacity and provide it with skills and decision -making skills and problem solving.

This computer engineer, who this Thursday in Malaga was one of the main speakers of 'Next Spain', the new technological debate forum and meeting place of the Vocento -promoted sector, predicts that "knowing how to program will be more valued than a second language".Vico, who a decade ago created the first computer capable of composing music, has a five years dedicated to his dream: to get Spanish schoolchildren to dodge the digital divide and end compulsory education with at least basic programming knowledge.

It was clear that the concepts and methods of computing were too complex for children and adolescents.That Muhammad had to go to the mountain.That's why he created the 'Toolbox platform.Academy ', which already use more than 500 schools and institutes in Andalusia and the Basque Country, but also from Colombia, Chile or Mexico, and with which they have learned to program 22.000 primary boys and that.

It is a simple method, which adapts to the age and abilities of the child, and that allows it to assimilate basic programming concepts between games and challenges.It has contents prepared to use it while teaching mathematics, physics, biology or language and allows to progress, according to the effort of each one, almost without limit.Programming is a language and, like other languages, children learn it almost without realizing it.

Vico has completed his method with five -minute audiovisual pills, the 'Txac Planet' (Canal Sur and ETB), and with an annual competition between schools, the 'txackathon'.Now tries to convince families, entrepreneurs and administrations to take the next step, the 'Tx10'.A ten -hour course, enjoyable, with challenges, stories or songs, that the centers could teach when they believe convenient, so that schoolchildren from 6 to 18 years handle programming skills to "jump the initial barrier and continue learning".