17 Apr Big Data comes to life for first-graders at Hilversum high school during guest lesson Doc4

Privacy, the AVG law, internet-of-things and artificial intelligence. It all came up for discussion last week during our guest lesson in Big Data at Alberdingk Thijm College in Hilversum, where thirteen curious senior general secondary school students had signed up for an introduction to our field of IT.

“Something with a lot of data” was big data for these students until that afternoon. All the more fun for us that even though big data was very abstract to them, they chose this guest lecture. High time, then, for a clear, pictorial explanation. Among other things, we discussed the online nature of everyone and everything these days and the explosive growth in the amount of data that people produce as a result.

After the substantive introduction of the concept and its implications for our society, the practical part followed. Students experimented with data visualization and were able to play interactively online with a number of ready-made beautiful diagrams. There was also the opportunity to compose diagrams themselves. Extraordinary to see that this section needed little guidance, as the students soon began to explore enthusiastically and independently.

Big data touches on so many current and important social issues – making these young people aware of this and making the world around us more understandable to them was a fantastic thing for us as Doc4 to do.

Hopefully we have made them enthusiastic about the IT profession and given them a little push in preparing for their future. In short, an engaging and special guest lesson. Not only for the students, but certainly for us.