Amazing feedback and school visits

 I recently got some amazing feedback from a 9-year-old reader through his dad. The Dragons Out book was an exciting Christmas present that the boy started reading on his own. He did the exercises at the end of the chapters and was really thrilled about them ("I did all of those great exercises!"). Upon asking why the book was so thrilling, he answered, "It was a great book because it had true things and fantasy side by side, and the exercises were fun!". It feels so good to hear such feedback - keep it coming! The unique approach of fantasy coupled with testing works.

Remember my school visits, earlier? It is again time to have school visits in Finland, too. It is especially nice now that face-to-face meetings are possible, and I don't need to access the school class virtually over a Teams meeting. That works too, yes, with a teacher facilitating in the class, but it is so much nicer and more concrete to meet and teach children face-to-face.

I asked for some opinions from past school visits. Teacher Anne Kurunmäki from Töölö school says that having a software testing expert explain what software testing is was a welcome change to everyday teaching, and also it made it much easier to take on the topic as the teacher didn't need to prepare and learn the topic that much. She estimates that an hour and a half that we used is the maximum duration for this session for children in elementary school to be able to focus entirely. The children liked the exercises a lot. With the drawing exercises, it was necessary to remind children that this was a software testing class and not a drawing class, so a limited time for each drawing exercise was enough. There was no need to create perfect drawings, just convey the idea of a software testing concept as a drawing, although we saw many really excellent pictures! This session was with 7th-grade students.

Another teacher, Hanna-Maria Partanen, praises the Dragons Out books in Finnish and English, and the adjacent Dragon Lesson in Software Testing. She has used them personally with schools and has passed the information about the books and lessons to many students in her Lahti area where she is now acting as regional coordinator for school cooperation. I have cooperated with her on many occasions during her new role.

I am also excited to be at the moment in talks about having a school visit to a Polish school adjacent to my visit to an ISTQB General Assembly in Poland. Having a Polish testing expert and I together deliver a testing lesson will be a thrill. I'll tell you later what actually happened.