and hi everyone I am Sophie and I’m here
to talk to you about the power of
stories but actually about the power of
one particular story that I love and you
all love Sesame Street and everyone
loves the Cookie Monster and Elmo and
big bird
we all remember them a lot and but what
people don’t know necessarily about
Sesame Street is that it did more for
the literacy and numeracy of poor
african-americans in America than any
other preschool initiative at that time
and like the fraction of the cost I
think it was about $7,000 per year for a
kid to attend preschool and five dollars
a year for a kid to watch Sesame Street
with the same educational outcomes so I
think it’s amazing and it came about
because it was like 1969 and there were
race riots and the civil rights movement
was gaining momentum and it was at a
time when usually African American
people were on TV as entertainers or
servants and some very smart people got
together and they were like Oh
everyone’s really addicted to you know
like this TV thing maybe we can harness
that and use that for good and they did
they were really effective so I love
Sesame Street and if this if this story
is making you feel sexy and you want to
go home and make a baby just imagine
that you did that and then fast-forward
and it’s 2050 and now your toilet is 23
years old and she’s just enters the work
world and 50% of the jobs that we know
of today are now automated they’re done
by robots maybe she’s got a neuro
prosthetic which means that she doesn’t
even need to move to direct the devices
in her life and that brings a whole new
meaning to sort of cybersecurity so yeah
he might need digital skills to stay
ahead um or and I know this makes
everyone very uncomfortable but like
given the state of the world at the
moment and their political instability
and the fact that population is growing
and we don’t have enough like water or
food and we like consuming ourselves
into the ground like maybe sure just
before a drink for food
so my main point is that like no one
knows the future is very uncertain and
more than ever before so how can we
prepare our children for the future well
I believe that kids need digital skills
and they are as fundamentally important
as reading or writing is without digital
skills how can you understand a world
that’s digital and if digital worlds are
built on code you need to understand
coding to understand that world and
employers think so – that’s why coders
now get paid more than you know like
doctors and you know other world Paige
or whoever bankers and it’s the most
sought-after skill in the world by 2020
we needs 2.3 million digital workers so
it’s really important and your kids need
to know it they don’t just need to code
they need to be able to think they need
to be able to think critically and they
need to be creative and they need to
have empathy because if we have kids
with skills or tools but they don’t know
how to think for themselves and they
can’t create and they don’t care about
other people then I think that we’re
headed for disaster and they’re robots
anyway it’s just that the other robots
will be faster than them so like where
are they going to learn these digital
skills will they learn it at school like
yeah maybe um in in 2014 in England we
introduced the computer science
curriculum and I hope to do that with
the Department for Education and code
club so it’s compulsory and
five-year-olds are learning to code and
they’re learning maths and English which
is great but teachers phenomen like it
takes ages to make big changes in
schools and in systems and I think that
a lot of people feel alienated by coding
they sort of think oh that’s for like a
sporty teenager in a dark room somewhere
and it doesn’t feel very accessible and
the proof of that is that the tech
industry is like got terrible diversity
statistics I think 18 percent of the
workforce are female or comprised of
other underrepresented groups and less
females take computer science now than
they did ten years ago which is crazy so
there’s a real issue if they’re not
learning at school like where else are
they going to learn it
where else do kids hang out off come
have just released a report to say that
kids spend up to six hours each day in
front of their screens so they are
learning a lot from their media which is
great just like Sesame Street are sort
of addicted and it could be an
opportunity for a solution but I believe
that that’s one of the problems is the
sort of conditioning that’s going on in
the mainstream media today so they’re
spending six hours in front of this
media and it’s sort of warping their
view of the world and the reason why
girls don’t think or don’t become coders
is because they don’t think that they
can be coders and they don’t think there
can be coders because they never see any
coders that look like them like in the
real world or in fictional worlds and so
if you’re ever bored you can just google
like any profession and you’ll see what
the world thinks of that profession so
this is what a boss looks like this is
what an assistant looks like this is
what a scientist looks like and this is
what a developer looks like or a coder
um and I go into schools and like
thoughts of kids a lot and I asked them
what percentage of people in the world
do you think has white Caucasian skin is
it fifteen percent forty four percent or
seventy three percent and nine times out
of ten all kids think it’s either forty
four or seventy three percent and you
know it’s nuts because it’s 15 percent
of people in the world that have white
Caucasian skin and actually we’ve done a
survey of a thousand parents across the
UK not parents adults and they have the
same sort of perception and and then
when you look at cartoons globally and
you think well what percent of course is
not just in the UK but across the world
have white skin and it’s 72 percent so
three courses so we’re sort of showing
kids that the world is full of white
people you know men are twice as likely
to take the lead as females in cartoons
90% of girls are underweight but like
you know like medically under way and
Batman never recycles and so like it’s
really bad we were yeah we’re showing
them that if you’re a white male you’re
visible and you’re more important and
yeah I got I go into schools quite a bit
and I see that the impact that this has
on kids
I was I used to teach in a school in in
a city London and none of my kids half
of whom were girls and about 80% were
black or Asian kids they never thought
of themselves as the leaders of tomorrow
were the engineers or the poets because
they never saw themselves in those
stories and so then I was like oh well
there’s an opportunity here technology
can be used you know you can make a game
out of everything so let’s make better
stories we need a media revolution and
that is the emoji for revolution who
knew that Apple had slipped they in
black and white one so yeah so I decided
that we could do something about this
and so I created a character called
detective dot she is a nine year old
code she loves minecraft and she used
his tech on her big global adventures
and her sidekick is a drone that she
built herself and she can program the
drones her scent sounds and movements
and the drain is an excellent spy
companion unless it is running out of
battery or worst of all can’t get a
signal and then it gets very
passive-aggressive her best friends move
cool tumble and tumble is very vain and
take selfies of himself all the time but
sometimes in the back of the selfies
they capture clues
do not trust Shelli belly she will try
and sell you stuff but her terms and
conditions are very onerous and she
actually wants all of your data because
she’s really off the global mind control
dot is part of a top-secret spy
organization called the children’s
intelligence agency also known as the
CIA you are all too old to join but the
CIA investigates really interesting sort
of mysteries and global injustice is
like homework crimes the global I think
yeah the global food crisis which is
like why all these adults just wasting
this liquid gold when it could be used
as sustainable energy another surfer and
so through the CIA the CIA has got
really cool gadgets so they’ve hacked
her selfie stick and if it gets into
enemy hands it releases a mega four and
it knocks everyone out for five minutes
and that allows us to show kids that
coding can be really fun and we can show
them authentication codes and sort of
debugging and they can tinker about with
the features so they might want a
distraction but for like a less
dangerous situation the other thing that
the CIA is looking into at the moment is
media and representation so we’ve got a
study going on across the country where
kids are extracting the data from their
story stories in their classroom or from
the best-selling books last year or from
movies and looking at representation and
like you get really interesting
discussion coming out of that so I don’t
know if you’ve all had a chance to read
it there are no books about people don’t
my friend Kayla one young girl wondered
if everyone who works at Disney was
white we had a seven-year-old boy who
said that he didn’t think it was fair
that men always have to be leaders and
be strong because it puts a lot of
pressure on him and he doesn’t always
want to be a strong leader just
sometimes and so the critical thinking
piece is so important and actually the
CIA’s motto is question everything so
getting kids to sort of question the
world around them and the systems that
they’re in and otherwise the robots will
win and yeah it’s going really well we
you know like kids really engaging with
it we get agents rise again to us all
the time they take their identity very
seriously as you can see we have no idea
who this is from
from zero zero one five eight zero and
agents in thirty countries across the
world and we launched chicken 20,000
schools so the story has really engaged
kids across the world so finally I want
everyone to think about we’re just
learning happen you know it doesn’t
happen between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.
and when the bell goes kids are like
without serif stop learning and they
learn all at the time and so we really
need to use the power of our stories
wisely to train kids to be prepared for
the future in all kids not just some
kids so like imagine a world where
Superman did recycle in like bottom City
was powered by solar energy and Barbie
was a white hat hacker or like what if
you got the soul of Sesame Street and
you combined it with the
minecraft and the sort of interactive
scalability of Pokemon go what sort of
effect would that have on kids and
finally in the words of the great
philosopher Whitney Houston I believe
that children in the future teach them
well and let them lead the way
thank you very much
[Applause]
to talk to you about the power of
stories but actually about the power of
one particular story that I love and you
all love Sesame Street and everyone
loves the Cookie Monster and Elmo and
big bird
we all remember them a lot and but what
people don’t know necessarily about
Sesame Street is that it did more for
the literacy and numeracy of poor
african-americans in America than any
other preschool initiative at that time
and like the fraction of the cost I
think it was about $7,000 per year for a
kid to attend preschool and five dollars
a year for a kid to watch Sesame Street
with the same educational outcomes so I
think it’s amazing and it came about
because it was like 1969 and there were
race riots and the civil rights movement
was gaining momentum and it was at a
time when usually African American
people were on TV as entertainers or
servants and some very smart people got
together and they were like Oh
everyone’s really addicted to you know
like this TV thing maybe we can harness
that and use that for good and they did
they were really effective so I love
Sesame Street and if this if this story
is making you feel sexy and you want to
go home and make a baby just imagine
that you did that and then fast-forward
and it’s 2050 and now your toilet is 23
years old and she’s just enters the work
world and 50% of the jobs that we know
of today are now automated they’re done
by robots maybe she’s got a neuro
prosthetic which means that she doesn’t
even need to move to direct the devices
in her life and that brings a whole new
meaning to sort of cybersecurity so yeah
he might need digital skills to stay
ahead um or and I know this makes
everyone very uncomfortable but like
given the state of the world at the
moment and their political instability
and the fact that population is growing
and we don’t have enough like water or
food and we like consuming ourselves
into the ground like maybe sure just
before a drink for food
so my main point is that like no one
knows the future is very uncertain and
more than ever before so how can we
prepare our children for the future well
I believe that kids need digital skills
and they are as fundamentally important
as reading or writing is without digital
skills how can you understand a world
that’s digital and if digital worlds are
built on code you need to understand
coding to understand that world and
employers think so – that’s why coders
now get paid more than you know like
doctors and you know other world Paige
or whoever bankers and it’s the most
sought-after skill in the world by 2020
we needs 2.3 million digital workers so
it’s really important and your kids need
to know it they don’t just need to code
they need to be able to think they need
to be able to think critically and they
need to be creative and they need to
have empathy because if we have kids
with skills or tools but they don’t know
how to think for themselves and they
can’t create and they don’t care about
other people then I think that we’re
headed for disaster and they’re robots
anyway it’s just that the other robots
will be faster than them so like where
are they going to learn these digital
skills will they learn it at school like
yeah maybe um in in 2014 in England we
introduced the computer science
curriculum and I hope to do that with
the Department for Education and code
club so it’s compulsory and
five-year-olds are learning to code and
they’re learning maths and English which
is great but teachers phenomen like it
takes ages to make big changes in
schools and in systems and I think that
a lot of people feel alienated by coding
they sort of think oh that’s for like a
sporty teenager in a dark room somewhere
and it doesn’t feel very accessible and
the proof of that is that the tech
industry is like got terrible diversity
statistics I think 18 percent of the
workforce are female or comprised of
other underrepresented groups and less
females take computer science now than
they did ten years ago which is crazy so
there’s a real issue if they’re not
learning at school like where else are
they going to learn it
where else do kids hang out off come
have just released a report to say that
kids spend up to six hours each day in
front of their screens so they are
learning a lot from their media which is
great just like Sesame Street are sort
of addicted and it could be an
opportunity for a solution but I believe
that that’s one of the problems is the
sort of conditioning that’s going on in
the mainstream media today so they’re
spending six hours in front of this
media and it’s sort of warping their
view of the world and the reason why
girls don’t think or don’t become coders
is because they don’t think that they
can be coders and they don’t think there
can be coders because they never see any
coders that look like them like in the
real world or in fictional worlds and so
if you’re ever bored you can just google
like any profession and you’ll see what
the world thinks of that profession so
this is what a boss looks like this is
what an assistant looks like this is
what a scientist looks like and this is
what a developer looks like or a coder
um and I go into schools and like
thoughts of kids a lot and I asked them
what percentage of people in the world
do you think has white Caucasian skin is
it fifteen percent forty four percent or
seventy three percent and nine times out
of ten all kids think it’s either forty
four or seventy three percent and you
know it’s nuts because it’s 15 percent
of people in the world that have white
Caucasian skin and actually we’ve done a
survey of a thousand parents across the
UK not parents adults and they have the
same sort of perception and and then
when you look at cartoons globally and
you think well what percent of course is
not just in the UK but across the world
have white skin and it’s 72 percent so
three courses so we’re sort of showing
kids that the world is full of white
people you know men are twice as likely
to take the lead as females in cartoons
90% of girls are underweight but like
you know like medically under way and
Batman never recycles and so like it’s
really bad we were yeah we’re showing
them that if you’re a white male you’re
visible and you’re more important and
yeah I got I go into schools quite a bit
and I see that the impact that this has
on kids
I was I used to teach in a school in in
a city London and none of my kids half
of whom were girls and about 80% were
black or Asian kids they never thought
of themselves as the leaders of tomorrow
were the engineers or the poets because
they never saw themselves in those
stories and so then I was like oh well
there’s an opportunity here technology
can be used you know you can make a game
out of everything so let’s make better
stories we need a media revolution and
that is the emoji for revolution who
knew that Apple had slipped they in
black and white one so yeah so I decided
that we could do something about this
and so I created a character called
detective dot she is a nine year old
code she loves minecraft and she used
his tech on her big global adventures
and her sidekick is a drone that she
built herself and she can program the
drones her scent sounds and movements
and the drain is an excellent spy
companion unless it is running out of
battery or worst of all can’t get a
signal and then it gets very
passive-aggressive her best friends move
cool tumble and tumble is very vain and
take selfies of himself all the time but
sometimes in the back of the selfies
they capture clues
do not trust Shelli belly she will try
and sell you stuff but her terms and
conditions are very onerous and she
actually wants all of your data because
she’s really off the global mind control
dot is part of a top-secret spy
organization called the children’s
intelligence agency also known as the
CIA you are all too old to join but the
CIA investigates really interesting sort
of mysteries and global injustice is
like homework crimes the global I think
yeah the global food crisis which is
like why all these adults just wasting
this liquid gold when it could be used
as sustainable energy another surfer and
so through the CIA the CIA has got
really cool gadgets so they’ve hacked
her selfie stick and if it gets into
enemy hands it releases a mega four and
it knocks everyone out for five minutes
and that allows us to show kids that
coding can be really fun and we can show
them authentication codes and sort of
debugging and they can tinker about with
the features so they might want a
distraction but for like a less
dangerous situation the other thing that
the CIA is looking into at the moment is
media and representation so we’ve got a
study going on across the country where
kids are extracting the data from their
story stories in their classroom or from
the best-selling books last year or from
movies and looking at representation and
like you get really interesting
discussion coming out of that so I don’t
know if you’ve all had a chance to read
it there are no books about people don’t
my friend Kayla one young girl wondered
if everyone who works at Disney was
white we had a seven-year-old boy who
said that he didn’t think it was fair
that men always have to be leaders and
be strong because it puts a lot of
pressure on him and he doesn’t always
want to be a strong leader just
sometimes and so the critical thinking
piece is so important and actually the
CIA’s motto is question everything so
getting kids to sort of question the
world around them and the systems that
they’re in and otherwise the robots will
win and yeah it’s going really well we
you know like kids really engaging with
it we get agents rise again to us all
the time they take their identity very
seriously as you can see we have no idea
who this is from
from zero zero one five eight zero and
agents in thirty countries across the
world and we launched chicken 20,000
schools so the story has really engaged
kids across the world so finally I want
everyone to think about we’re just
learning happen you know it doesn’t
happen between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m.
and when the bell goes kids are like
without serif stop learning and they
learn all at the time and so we really
need to use the power of our stories
wisely to train kids to be prepared for
the future in all kids not just some
kids so like imagine a world where
Superman did recycle in like bottom City
was powered by solar energy and Barbie
was a white hat hacker or like what if
you got the soul of Sesame Street and
you combined it with the
minecraft and the sort of interactive
scalability of Pokemon go what sort of
effect would that have on kids and
finally in the words of the great
philosopher Whitney Houston I believe
that children in the future teach them
well and let them lead the way
thank you very much
[Applause]
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