What is ShadowTech Day?
ShadowTech Day offers a unique experience to students to get a first-hand look at what a day in the life of a tech professional entails by spending a day in their workplace.
Secondary school students are paired with a mentor who works in a local tech organisation. With their mentor, students are taken through a “day in the life of” experience that has them sitting in on meetings, witnessing the communication and interaction between peers, and seeing what a typical day is like in the IT Industry.
As a TechWomen initiative, the programme is largely aimed at high school aged women in years 9-11.
Here’s what previous ShadowTech participants have had to say about the programmme:
“A lot of energy is put into a day like this, from our team and the students. It comes back 10-fold. Events like this really resonate in our company values and contribute to our culture within our business. We were energised by seeing their reaction to the possibility of careers in tech.” Industry Mentor 2019
“I found that IT isn’t all about maths, coding and boring nerdy things. You can join even if you don’t have a degree.” Student 2019
ShadowTech has joined TechHub and 123Tech as an integrated school outreach programme offered by the tech sector, a partnership between IT Professionals and NZTech. This integrated programme is delivered by IT Professionals.
How does this differ from ShadowTech Teachers?
ShadowTech has been running since 2014 where the first ShadowTech Day gave girls in years 9-11 the chance to shadow a tech professional for a day.
In 2021, the ShadowTech Teachers programme was introduced to widen the impact of ShadowTech by offering a similar programme to secondary school teachers. Learn more about ShadowTech Teachers.
