Learning centre of the future

Ms Pausder, you are among the few people who were able to visit the TUMO centre, even before the actual target group. Young people will initially only have access to digital lessons due to coronavirus. What were your impressions there?

Verena Pausder: I’m delighted. It’s open, inclusive, bright – in short, it’s the complete opposite of “children sitting alone in a room and playing on a device.” It looks nothing like school or a traditional classroom. TUMO is a learning facility of the future, that’s for sure.

And yet the idea and the pilot project started in a developing country.

Armenia is far ahead of us when it comes to software programming. There, they quickly understood that education is their sole resource and their only chance to be an active player in future. Armenian software developers have a good reputation far beyond their country’s borders. That’s how I found out about TUMO three or four years ago and followed it on the Internet with great interest and fascination. And when I heard that KfW had imported the concept to Germany, I immediately said “I want to support that!”

What inspired you to become involved with digital education?

The first business I founded was a digital games company. However afterwards, I began thinking that we need to train children to become creators in the digital world. We need to teach them programming, robotics, data science, artificial intelligence and graphic design. To get that ball rolling, I founded my second company, HABA Digitalwerkstätten, a kind of TUMO for six to twelve-year-olds. The experience showed me that we cannot stop there. We need offerings that take people right through to university, and then a corresponding course of study to maintain the education chain. That is what our country needs to ensure that things get done. We still haven’t placed enough of a priority on the subject of digital education. So TUMO does a wonderful job filling that gap.

What do you like about TUMO, in particular?

I like that TUMO is just as appealing to girls as it is to boys, and that it’s called the “Centre for Creative Technologies” and not something like the “Technical Centre for Applied Sciences”. This helps girls find something appealing from the start, like music, photography, film or graphic design. And that could lead to a passion for coding or robotics because they also catch glimpses of those areas there.

Coronavirus taught Germany a lesson when it comes to digitalisation, especially in schools. What should the takeaway be after the coronavirus crisis is over?

Coronavirus really did trigger massive nationwide training measures; ten million pupils, their parents and teachers were forced to deal with digitalisation. Now we have to accept that challenge. We need to understand that digital education is a resource and promote it the way we promote music schools or sports associations because we believe that school athletics alone are insufficient. If the state wants digital extracurricular learning facilities, an essential step has already been taken. TUMO sends a strong message to that effect. We have a lot of private capital in Germany in charitable trusts, family-owned companies, et cetera. I am confident that TUMO will prevail thanks to their involvement.