Polish students testing session

On my visit to the ISTQB General Assembly in Wroclaw, Poland, a chance to talk to Polish students came up. The organizing party SJSI (Polish Testing Board) was kind enough to organize a few classes from local Wroclaw schools to attend my Dragon Lesson in Software Testing. I presented my Polish slides in English while my ISTQB colleague Lucjan Stapp translated my talk into Polish. Students were very motivated and enthusiastically answered questions, even in English.

The group consisted of two school classes, 7th and 8th grade, brought to PTB office by two lovely teachers. So, the students were 14-15 year-olds, which fits nicely with the ideal reader profile of the book, as has been proven many times earlier. I was glad to get a confirmation once again. Children (or rather teenagers) of this age are quite familiar and fluent with different software, of course mostly games on their mobile phones. In the testing exercise, most of them tested their favourite game, but I also saw picture editing apps, mobile phone user interfaces itself, and websites. And they found serious shortcomings, bugs, and slowness in those apps! Great!

Many exercises combined imagination to connect a testing concept (tester, software, defect) into a fantasy picture. So they got to work their brains and then use their artistic skills. Even though the time in each exercise was limited, and the advice was to make the intellectual connection between the testing concept and the drawings and use less time in perfecting the drawings, some students still had time for amazing drawings. Below I share a few of them. More of their drawings are here in reader drawings, published with their permission.

I would challenge teachers and testers in different countries to invite me to visit a local school. The material (free, Creative Commons) exists in 20 languages. When I travel for some other reason, it makes sense to also couple a school visit with such a journey.








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