Equipping the Next Generation of Innovators

Today, I had the pleasure of meeting the next generation of innovators at the Comcast Internet Essentials Back to School event in Baltimore. Students from across the city came together to demonstrate all that they had learned at the Digital Harbor Foundation’s dynamic STEM after-school program. I was blown away by our student speaker, Nicholas Cato — a senior at Digital Harbor High School who travels over an hour every day to school, and still maintains a 4.2 GPA.

I want to share his insightful remarks on what the internet means to him, and what he believes it means to hundreds of students like him across our state. Students like Nicholas are a big part of the reason why we’ve made STEM education a key component of statewide our education goal — one of our 16 strategic goals for moving Maryland forward.

Thanks to programs like Internet Essentials, more students like Nicholas can fully compete with their peers in school today, which means they’ll be poised to compete and succeed in the high-tech workforce of tomorrow.

Check his speech out after the jump.

Thank you for this opportunity to say a few words and talk about what access to technology and to the Internet means to me. This question is both an easy and a hard question to answer. It is easy to simply say that the Internet is essential to life today. But at the same time, life existed before the Internet too. Without the Internet, my day-to-day might actually not be that different. My alarm clock would still wake me up, I would still go to school, I would still have my family. Without the Internet, however, my life over all would be very different though. Today’s workplace depends more and more on the Internet, and the career I want, wouldn’t exist without technology.

What is the Internet, really?

To me, the Internet has become a way of life that I can’t be without. It’s something that I go home to everyday and use to relax and connect with the rest of the world. One minute, I could be talking to my brother who’s in Michigan, and the next, I could be connected to a friend in Japan, playing a game — or have a mild conversation with them.

But before I talk more about all of the things the Internet allows, I want to tell you about the first time I played a multiplayer, online game. I had played games before that, but they were always games that I played alone. The fun, the excitement and the feelings that I get from playing with others is uncomparable. There is a different experience with every lobby and it feels as if I’m at a completely different place every time. I couldn’t imagine going back to just playing games the way we used to before they were connected through the Internet.

The Internet allows us to virtually travel the world in a matter of minutes and to explore a wide variety of resources with just the click of a button. We have access to Wikipedia, dictionaries, and electronic calculators that we would otherwise have to buy, if we were not connected to the broad network that is the Internet today.
We could watch YouTube tutorials to learn completely new things like I did this summer with the game programming engine Unity
We could ask questions and get answers in real-time
We could shop and buy both common and unique things that are then shipped directly to your house
We could research and learn about colleges
We could find and connect with people from all over the world
We could stay connected socially with friends even after you or they move away
We could get updates on the latest news from around the corner or around the world
We could find out the best way to get from one place to the next, know about bus schedules and road closures, traffic accidents, etc.
We could listen to music, view sporting events, and watch movies or television shows

But, of all of the things you can do, the thing that still amazes me the most is that I can work on a team towards a shared goal with someone I may actually never meet in person and who I wouldn’t otherwise know. I want my career to be like this — where I work towards a common vision with a variety of other people from all different backgrounds. I wish school was more like this. People could work together better, find and share interests, and solve real-world problems.

I believe that access to the Internet is something that everybody should have and should actively use in their day-to-day lives. It’s a life-saver, a game-changer and most importantly, it is us, because without you and me, where would the internet be? The internet has changed millions of lives and counting, and I look forward to where it’s going to take us in the future.