Kids from Dublin 15 get coding at ITB
Institute of Technology Blanchardstown (ITB) has welcomed 60 students aged 10 to 16 into the college to take part in an initiative created by teen programmer James Whelton.
With the support and encouragement of entrepreneur Bill Liao, the first CoderDojo opened in Cork and has now come to ITB. In its third week, students come each Saturday for two and a half hours to learn how code, develop websites, apps, programmes, games and much more all with a bit of fun and imagination thrown in. There are three more weeks to run at the ITB CoderDojo but another Dojo will be starting soon.
In addition to learning to code, members meet like-minded people and show off what they’ve been working on. CoderDojo also puts a strong emphasis on open source and free software, and has a strong network of members and volunteers globally.
Commenting on the initiative, ITB’s marketing and development manager, Mairead Murphy said: “It’s great to see so many children taking part and obviously enjoying it so much. Their creativity is astounding and soon they will have the programming skills to really implement those apps and websites that they can already imagine” she said.
One of the organisers of the event, Ivo Brett, commented: “CoderDojo has been an enormous success in Dublin 15 so far. We have had full classes every Saturday since we started and it has been great to see the enthusiasm of the kids as they learn new skills. Our biggest challenge is that we don’t have enough places and we are heavily oversubscribed. We would love to see CoderDojo extended to other areas in Dublin 15 so that we can accommodate more kids. In order for this to happen we need more mentors and we would welcome any mentors contacting us on: coderdojod15@gmail.com”
Fellow organiser, Colm Ahern, said of the first Dublin 15 CoderDojo: “There are some really talented web developers among these boys and girls. CoderDojo proves that you are never too young to learn things which many mentors here began learning after they started college. These kids have picked up some very tricky concepts after just two sessions. You can tell that some of them can’t wait to get onto more challenging stuff, and they will become great software engineers. Who knows, the next Mark Zuckerberg could be among these kids. ”