Dear Parents and Educators and Friends of Cloudera,
If you are reading this blog, you know us at Cloudera as a group of self-described data geeks and data analysts. We believe data drives better decisions and moves businesses forward and for us, that’s exciting. We are innovating and helping Fortune 500 transform and grow because they can make better data-driven decisions at the accelerated pace we live and work in today.
However, data doesn’t just make a difference for enterprises. It can make an impact for local communities, schools, and children. Our company mission is to make data and analytics easy and accessible, for everyone. And we mean it.
As we look at the importance of data, and data for good, we wanted to take an opportunity to do something different this year.
For over a year the world did everything differently, we need to remember that many children have had school experiences unlike any other. We know that the STEM courses can be even more difficult in a virtual learning environment. Our partnership with the Boys & Girls Club has provided us with a glimpse of the unique schooling many kids faced. We learned that ‘homework buddy programs’ and additional curriculum for ‘Brain Gain’ courses are important and we see a role in this for Cloudera. This year, we partnered with a team of educators specializing in K-12, ReadyAI, who are established authors of books for children with an inclusive approach to learning and advancing AI and technology concepts in an educational yet entertaining way.
We are excited about these partnerships and collaborations. Together, we have written our first book for children, 8-10 years old — “A Fresh Squeeze on Data”. This book shows simple ways for problem solving with data in a way that kids can understand. We have a small ‘working group’ of parents and kids at Cloudera who have been reading this book at home and so far, the reviews have been good!
No age is too early to start teaching data literacy. It’s even more important to expose kids to it who otherwise may not have the opportunity. Through our partnership with the Boys & Girls Club and Ready AI, we have been able to create a tool where the adults in children’s lives are able to teach them skills for the workforce of the future. I would love nothing more than to someday work for one of the kids who read our book!
We would appreciate your support and feedback on this book and consider this a first step in our journey to sharing the importance and excitement of data and AI, with everyone in the communities where we work and live. Please take advantage of the resources our teams have put together for kids, adults, and educators. This project has been a bright spot for us to work on in an otherwise difficult time around the world, we hope you can feel the love and passion we have for it as you share it with the children in your life.
Editor's Choice
This is great initiative to making kids future ready.