Young tech star pushes IT learning

Michael Furdyk

Many of our earliest memories involve unwrapping presents, jumping in puddles or playing on swings.

But Canadian e-entrepreneur Michael Furdyk recalls a distinctly different childhood - one where he was playing with a Commodore 64 home computer at the tender age of 2. It was, of course, a sign of things to come.

While still in high school Furdyk started a website he later sold for seven figures. He has worked with the United Nations, corporations including Microsoft, IBM and Xerox, contributed to a list of media organisations as long as your arm, and appeared on Oprah Winfrey.

For many, that would be a lifetime of achievements, but Furdyk has just turned 23.

Many young entrepreneurs with his track record would be unable to fit their ego through the door, but Furdyk is polite, engaging and passionate about helping a younger generation realise its dreams.

He is in Auckland this week to speak at the ULearn educational teaching conference, which promotes the use of digital technology in the classroom, and runs till tomorrow.

Furdyk wants to challenge educators to "help find a way for this generation to get more out of education and challenge them to use technology to engage them in doing that".

He says the technology boom since the 1990s has given young people different expectations and educational needs from those of their parents.

"Educators are challenged to really help develop new types of skills [to meet] the expectations of the workplace of the future," he says.

Furdyk wants to encourage more support within education "so young people with creative ideas can actually get that time off [school] and get credits for it instead of being made to feel they are risking everything just to invest in their idea".

He was a 16-year-old schoolboy when he co-founded a website called MyDesktop.com, publishing articles by young people interested in technology.

The budding e-entrepreneur took some time off school to run the site, which attracted a million visitors and advertising revenue of up to US$60,000 ($89,120) a month, Furdyk says.

He sold the site in 1999 for an undisclosed seven-figure sum, then launched shopping comparison site BuyBuddy.com.

Furdyk's current passion is TakingITGlobal.org - a non-profit website community he co-founded in 2000 to raise awareness of global issues among young people.
The site has almost 100,000 members in 200 countries and receives 60,000 visitors each day, he says.

"A lot of the other teen sites out there are focused on consumerism, dating or things like that and we just wanted to create an open space for people to work on positive contributions towards their communities."

The site has five themes - action, community, opportunity, expression and understanding - and is the youth partner for the UN's eight "millennium development goals", which include universal primary education and eradicating extreme poverty.

Furdyk says the site is working for the incorporation of technology into education to "broaden the horizon of young people, help them to learn about global issues and also connect with other young people".

Content is in five languages but he wants to expand this.