Scouts encourage to do good with tech? Of course
But WHICH tech?
UK Scouts and Plusnet have partnered to launch a digital camp for 11–18-year-olds. The kick-off event included a hackathon in partnership with the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
“While Scouts may be known for teaching young people how to be prepared for life through traditional practical skills, we wanted to help take this into the digital age” said a Plusnet manager to explain the partnership.
Taking scouting in the digital age? Check here first
“Linux and the whole FLOSS movement do appear as the soul of Scouting made software: the first, if not only, kind of IT technology that should be proposed to Boy Scouts or used by their leaders”.
That statement is the conclusion of a piece I wrote fifteen years ago (2004), on the missing, or more exactly still unseen between scouting and free as in freedom software. Hackatons and programs like that are very good, of course. But the best way to “take scouting into the digital age” may be to acknowledge that scouting was somehow prepared to do it, since it started.
“Be Prepared” always included “Bit Prepared”.
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I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
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