Innovation and entrepreneurship in Iraq are the backbones of modernism and the key to improving a country’s infrastructure, quality of life, and future. Even though Iraq and Kurdistan are in great demands and have incredible space for innovation, but we don’t see it happening as much as we would like to. This is what Dr. Hemin Latif explained in his TEDx talk titled “How Can Teaching Creativity Support Entrepreneurship?” at the first TEDxNishtiman event in Kurdistan, Iraq.

Dr. Latif, a university lecturer and the executive director at TeraTarget, an IT innovation company, suggests that the school system is the cause of the problem; the problem of the lack of innovation and entrepreneurship personalities. Dr. Latif states that our school systems don’t build or grow creativity in our youth. After finding the root of the problem, Dr. Latif decided to fix it, at least on some levels. He prepared a new course on creativity and innovation in the university that he teaches.

After overcoming obstacles, Dr. Latif finalized and provided the course on creativity. There were concerns about the course’s success and whether the course is going to attract enough interest among the students in the course’s topics. However, the course exceeded everyone’s expectation. The number of students that registered for that course were six times more than the expected number.

This huge number of students means people, especially the youth here, desire to learn and explore creativity. “We teach people physics, and then we expect them to apply it, we teach them law, and then we expect them to apply it.” Dr. Latif continued, “The same goes for creativity, we have to teach creativity before we expect it from people. We cannot demand creativity without teaching creativity!”

Iraq is lacking innovators and entrepreneurs, even though there are opportunities for these people to thrive and make changes. Since Iraq and Kurdistan, too, are “developing” countries and have shortages in services, innovators and entrepreneurs are needed to fill these spaces.

These people can reshape and reintroduce communities in a new image. An actual image that will make it easier for the future generation of innovators and entrepreneurs to establish themselves. To achieve this, first, we have to start with the educational system and remake it in a way that encourages innovation and entrepreneurship. Dr. Latif ends his talk by stating his dream of having every student in the country taking a course on creativity and having every institution in the country appointing a vice president for creativity and innovation.

TEDx talk of Dr. Latif about How Can Teaching Creativity Support Entrepreneurship in Iraq?

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TeraTarget starts robotics workshops in Iraq, as the Madad Lab II workshops continue, participants are learning exciting topics. These topics include Robotics and Physical Computing. As usual, the Madad Lab II workshops and TeraTarget’s technical help are providing useful skills to the participants.

After this week’s robotics workshops in Iraq, the participants will be able to do plenty of critical and fundamental technological innovations. The efficiency of these workshops is that they are practical more than theoretical. Participants are creating and coding basic robotic programs in the workshops, and this creates an interactive experience for them.

The robotics workshops are action-driven ones. Participants learn how to make LED lights, sensors, joysticks, push buttons and program coding. They have created their own small functional robotic parts. Furthermore, created and coded robots for the first time in the robotics workshops, even though they had no background knowledge.

The participants learned how to do the basics of coding using the Arduino program in this week’s robotics workshops. The program is an excellent choice for working on both hardware and software programming at the same time. Moreover, participants learned about motors and how robots and LED lights work. They finished creating LED boards with controllable lighting systems. Furthermore, the partakers created movable motors, controlled through the Arduino program. Notably, the robots are basic, but they are a fundamental start in the world of robotics.

The world’s stepping towards a path of bringing robots to take on specific tasks in our life. Therefore, these new skills and knowledge about robotics and computing are crucial to know and master. Participants at Madad Lab now have the necessary abilities to improve themselves and compete with the fast-growing world of robotics.

While the participants develop their projects, they’ll be able to include a robotic aspect to it. This opportunity is unique, and it is not a common thing in the region. The funding of the Qudra program and the technical partnership with TeraTarget are achieving successes. TeraTarget has provided and helped the workshops with top IT field expert lecturers to mentor the participants toward more success.

The post The world is heading toward robotics, and the participants in Madad Lab II had their start in robotics workshops in Iraq. appeared first on TeraTarget.