We all live digital lives today.

In 1998, there were 13 million internet users in the world, mostly using Netscape. In 2014, there are 2.4 billion.

The internet, from being used by an elite, has become an everyday tool for anybody and everybody.

By 2024, it is expected that the world will have 6 billion internet users. In time, there may be as many as 1 trillion connected devices, from fridges to cars.

In 1998, we all knew what the computer was doing. Today, whatever the device we use, we hardly know enough about it except maybe how to make it work. There is now a huge skills gap which is getting wider, not narrower.

Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, was speaking to the Innovation Convention held by the European Commission in Brussels last week.

Mark has spearheaded the Webmaker project, which combines the power of Mozilla’s community and award winning tools to teach web literacy at a global scale. In 2013, Mark kicked off Webmaker’s premier global educational campaign, Maker Party, with US President Barack Obama, resulting in more than 1600 educational events in 330 cities around the world.

When the world switched from an agrarian society to an industrial one, it needed public schools to create the workforce of the industrial society. Now that the world is moving to a digital world, we must have a huge change in the manner of teaching. In the past years, teaching aimed at getting the students to be good at trade and get jobs. Today, education must unleash the creativity of students.

What has been called ‘the lost generation’, that is the millions of unemployed young people is actually a huge opportunity for them to become digital-literate.

There is an over-achiever in Europe – tiny Estonia where the education system was overhauled in the past 10 years with a big emphasis on ICT, not as a separate subject but as a subject underlining all the other subjects, including Estonian and music. 20,000 students will become ICT experts by 2020, in a population of just 1.3 million, and ICT efficiency has had a remarkable impact on government employees. 

 Another speaker at the same forum was Doug Richard, CEO and founder of School for Startups.

Doug founded his school to enable new and aspiring entrepreneurs turn their big ideas into successful enterprises. A renowned entrepreneur himself, Doug has taught, mentored and provided training to over 25,000 businesses encouraging a more entrepreneurial mind-set to improve bottom line results.

It was Doug who introduced the concept of leapfrog to the convention. Leapfrog happens when a technological innovation sweeps away the preceding technology. For instance, the entire sub-Saharan group of countries switched to mobile telephony without passing through the preceding phase of fixed line technology.

Where will the next leapfrog come?

In education, teaching is still done in the traditional way, on a people to people basis. But it is possible, and in fact it has been done, for instance, to teach Maths through YouTube. It is also possible to hold micro lessons through the web. The university of South New Hampshire, for instance, has organised specialised courses and 50,000 have applied, even though at $25,000 each it is not cheap. In two or three years’ time, this will mushroom.

Many persist in using the methods of yesterday but in reality for access to finance one does not really need to go to the banks and even venture capital is an outmoded system.  

There is money to be found in the Cloud and start-ups have also been known to get funds from their future clients.

The last speaker in the forum was Anna-Marie Imafidon. Somewhat of a child prodigy, she passed A-level computing at age 11, entered John Hopkins University at age 13 and at 17 did her Masters at Oxford. She was named on the Evening Standard’s recent list of ’25 under 25s’ a on The Guardian’s ‘Top 10 women in tech you need to know’.

She said she does things when she wants to, and her organisation, Stemettes, does not have an office but is an organisation nevertheless. Nor did she draw up a business plan and go to a bank.

Her website states: “There aren't enough women going into Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM) fields. It's a problem because there is currently a skills shortage, and if we don't have a diverse workforce in STEM then our competitive advantage is missing a huge boost. We're looking for individuals and companies to help us give the next generation a good grasp of STEM, what it involves and the roles available. “

It identifies three types of events:

-      Panel events: Hear from women about their amazing roles within STEM, their stories and their advice for you, the next generation. We always include refreshments, quizzes and prizes as well as a bit of fun and some goody bags.

-      Hackathons: Make techy stuff with us.

Laptops, Prizes, Presentations and Mentors all thrown together with Wi-Fi and food over 2 days. We'll teach you all you need to know to create your own mobile app, game or website and then you can enter our 'Demo Day' competition on your own or in a team.

-      Exhibitions: Try out some Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths with our Stemettes. Perhaps you'll 3D print a necklace, choreograph a dance with a robot or even separate some nuclear substances.