Last week, Startup Lithuania ran a BarCamp on hardware – building it, commercializing it and developing its ecosystem. Donatas Malinauskas, CTO at Deeper, the makers of award-winning smart fishfinders, was among the speakers, and he suggested that design and technology lessons we currently have at secondary schools do not reflect current market needs. We had a quick chat with Donatas where he elaborates further on this matter.

Humanities and natural science remain the most important elements in secondary education curriculum, and yet there’s too little attention paid to technology and its practical use. For instance, “Design and Technology” lessons (Lith. “darbai”) are not really considered to be important, though it could be the first significant opportunity to introduce pupils to latest technologies and, most importantly, to allow them trying and playing with these innovations. Who knows, maybe this could play an important role when choosing a future profession?

I believe knowing how different technologies work is of much greater importance than learning to carve a wooden spoon. I believe secondary schools should show pupils the latest technologies. They should help students to learn what takes place at modern factories, to show how products are being designed, produced and introduced to the market.

If we wish to have more high-tech companies in Lithuania and more skilled professionals working there, we must create integrated education programmes, where technology lessons would fill the gap between natural science and humanities, as well as between technologies and creativity. Technology lessons should encourage discussing about why new products are needed, and then pupils could try building these products themselves!

Sadly, I believe many teachers are still used to older teaching methods and they might be afraid of embracing new technologies. One can’t explain others how technologies work if he doesn’t know about it himself. However, our society becomes surrounded by technologies in every field of our lives, and so we can no longer ignore it, particularly in the education process.

Today, you can build a basic 3D printer and understand its principles using information you find on the internet and materials available at any larger supermarket. One no longer needs deep electronics or robotics skills for that. For this reason, I believe design and technology lessons could be among the most exciting ones for pupils if they are set up based on programmes that embrace latest technologies and implemented by curious and tech-savvy teachers.

Thank you for your time and thoughts, Donatas!

Are you a maker or a hardware enthusiast? Hacker Games: Vilnius are taking place next weekend with two hardware-related tracks – Hardware and Smart Energy. Deeper has set its Deeper PRO+ as a prize for the best engineer in addition to 1K EUR in cash for the winners of Smart Energy track – you can still register to the event, build a team and build something big!