In this demo-filled talk MIT's Mitch Resnick, one of the main creators of the kids coding program called Scratch, outlines the benefits of teaching kids to code, so they can do more than just “read” new technologies -- but also create them.
"As kids are creating projects like this, they're learning to code, but even more importantly, they're coding to learn. Because as they learn to code, it enables them to learn many other things, opens up many new opportunities for learning. Again, it's useful to make an analogy to reading and writing. When you learn to read and write, it opens up opportunities for you to learn so many other things. When you learn to read, you can then read to learn. And it's the same thing with coding. If you learn to code, you can code to learn. Now some of the things you can learn are sort of obvious. You learn more about how computers work. But that's just where it starts. When you learn to code, it opens up for you to learn many other things."