ØIT is arranging an IT-night for teenagers

Together with Mobile Heights, Sony Ericsson, ST Ericsson, Telia Sonera, Axis and TAT, ØIT is organizing a one-day event where junior high school teenagers can experience the IT-industry. The purpose of the IT-night is to get more teenagers to choose science and technical education in high school. Further, this will hopefully increase the applications for IT and technology education at university, and in the end lead to more people in the IT-industry.

The IT-night, or IT-natten which it is called in Swedish, will occur one day during the November holiday 2009 in Skåne. Our goal is to attract 1000 junior high school teenagers by arranging an exciting "night" with study tours of both big and small IT-companies, a large fair with a variety of stakeholders and a concert to finish it all off.

The inspiration comes from the Danish IT-night project which as been a successful arrangement the last two years. The IT-night in Denmark was launched in 2007 for the first time and was a nation-wide initiative. The event managed to attract thousands of high school students and almost a hundred IT-companies participated. The short term evaluation of the Danish IT-night showed that the interest for IT and the IT-industry increased tremendously among the teenagers. It also showed that the applications for IT and technology education at university did not decrease as it did in so many other fields of education.

Future Friday is a similar initiative, that was launched at Kista Science Center, Stockholm, in March this year. This event addressed high school teenagers from the Stockholm area and over one thousand students visited the one-day fair. IT-companies, university teachers, students and researchers were there to present the IT-industry and IT-education to the teenagers.

Now we at ØIT are arranging an IT-night in Skåne with both study tours, a fair and a concert. We are focusing on junior high school pupils and with a special emphasis on girls and people from non-academic environments. With IT-natten we want to get more teenagers to study within the fields of IT and technology and to stimulate the growth of the IT-industry in the Øresund region.

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