Last weekend I spent Saturday in Limerick Institute of Technology at the CoderDojo Midwest MegaDojo event. The aim of the event was to encourage more of our young people to learn to code. There were lots of workshops on the day as well as some Tech Talks and a showcase event by local companies. The workshops were varied in nature and covered games development using the entry level environment Scratch, through Blender and Unity as well as Web Development, electronics in the form of Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Micro:bit and not forgetting porgramming in Java and Python. There was truly something for everyone!!
I spent most of my day in the Beginners Scratch workshops before switching across to Beginners Web Development at the end of the day. For me on the day it was magic to watch as a smile crept across a face as a child as young as 7 (and even younger in some cases!) got a penguin to skate over and back across the screen catching presents on their merry way in the Scratch room, or created their own webpage resplendent with Christmas trees in the Web Development room.
What struck me very forcefully was seeing how many young girls turned up on the day … a true joy to behold 🙂
Pam O'Brien's blog 