Oracle inspires the next generation in STEM Careers
The technology industry is critical to global progress and prosperity, and Oracle’s corporate citizenship initiatives are grounded in our technology leadership. Oracle has leveraged this to advance education for nearly 20 years. The Oracle Academy partners with over 6,000 educational institutes worldwide to help secondary students and teachers gain industry-relevant skills prior to entering the workforce.
On Thursday 20 October, forty transition year students visited Oracle offices in Dublin for Build an APP Day.This is a day set aside to inspire young people to study Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) and to offer students a window into an IT workplace and the vast career opportunities in technology. Through a partnership with Business in the Community Ireland, four local schools took part in the challenge – St Joseph’s CBS, Marino College, O’Connell’s School and Rosmini Community School.
The day was led by twenty inspiring Oracle employees, who guided enthusiastic students through the ‘Tech Innovation Festival’, breakout work groups and plenty of improv sessions and prizes. Demonstrations and workshops included technology trends in Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots, Beacons and Mobile and how these new technologies are changing the world of banking, retail, and the enviroment. Customer personas and customer journey planning workshops gave the students great insight into how technology can solve problems in real world applications.
The four schools were challenged to define an issue in retail, banking or the environment using technology to solve the problem. The winning team was Rosmini CS. Their app called Home< was based on helping the homeless, using location technology to connect with relevant social services to report and identify their need state or medical treatment required.
For our nation’s young people, STEM education is a passport to a career full of exciting breakthroughs and solutions directly addressing global challenges that current and future generations will need to address.
Oracle is actively involved in a number of community programmes that encourage youth and teachers to pursure their interest in STEM subjects, including support for programmes such as CoderDojo, Junior Achievement Awards and CASPr (Community After Schools Project). Oracle and BITCI will co-deliver a futher action on education later this year through the STEM Seeing Is Believing tour which provides STEM teachers and guidance counsellors valuable insight into the industry by seeing in ‘real’ terms the application of their teaching and the many career opportunities for their students.
