What do kids know about Metapack?

In January, we visited students from a secondary school in Zielona Góra. Our team of three took up the challenge and tried to explain to the kids what we do at Metapack every day. With what result?

The visit was a response to the institution’s initiative, which was willing to establish cooperation with local companies in the field of professional pre-orientation at a very early stage of education. We couldn’t say ‘no’ to that. We immediately raised to the challenge and selected three Metapackers who prepared a short speech and practical workshops for enthusiastic little students. We asked Aneta, Paweł and Piotr for a summary of this visit.

Is it easier to explain what Metapack does to children than to family at Christmas Eve dinner?

Paweł: Yes and no (laughs). On the one hand, children are so small that it is difficult to explain to them what the Internet is and that you can shop online, because they don’t always know it. As for adults, it’s easier since everyone does shopping online. However, we were surprised by a group of 4-year-olds who – as it turned out – knew very well what online shopping is all about.

What was your plan for the talk with kids about Metapack? You must have come up with a different strategy than during the student visits to the company.

Aneta: Definitely. This is more complicated because e-commerce and information technology itself are not yet so tangible to children at this early stage of development. Therefore, one of my colleagues, who is a Solution Architect, came up with a very interesting form of these workshops, where the children themselves, with the help of our scanners and thermal printers, could check and receive tangible results of our platform, which integrates large companies with couriers.

Piotr: In kindergarten, we started a discussion with questions related to whether their parents buy something, how does a package gets to their home. Do they know who is bringing the package and how does the courier know that the package is supposed to arrive at their home? In the older group of 4-year-olds, it turned out that the children know a lot about this process. Most likely they are shopping with their parents. Therefore, the exercise that they later did with the scanner and printer made a greater impression on them and they were very surprised that this is how it works.

What exactly was the workshop about?

Piotr: The children received special QR codes with their names previously coded. Their task was to scan their code with our scanner, which automatically transferred data to the thermal printer and printed the label. This label contains all coded information with the school’s address and the child’s name. Each student could take such a label, stick it somewhere at home and scan it with his or her phone at any time.

See how the visit was going and how much fun the students had during the workshops: