Interview with Catrina Carrigan, DCU, CoderDojo

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How did you hear about CoderDojo? What encouraged you to get involved?

I heard about CoderDojo from my brother. After he came home from his first session and showed me what he did, I wanted to try, too.

What was the first Dojo like compared to dojo’s now?
When I first joined CoderDojo in DCU it was a lot smaller than it is now. There was one three hour session every Saturday. Now there are four sessions.

What do you do in CoderDojo?
I help out at CoderDojo girls or I’ll go through basic HTML with them, fix their code when things don't work. In the afternoon I go to the advanced session to learn things myself.

How do you encourage people to get involved? 
When new people join, I try to show them things that are really simple but impressive so that they can see that it isn't really hard. I think that when people see that they can actually do it, it helps their confidence and they're more likely to want to keep going to sessions and work on their own projects.

What do your friends think of your coding skills?
A lot of my friends don't understand it and assume I spend my time hacking Facebook.

Do you think a CoderDojo Girls class is necessary?
I think it helps girls to have a girls only class. Being the only girl in a room full of boys and not understanding what’s happening can be scary. You assume that everyone else knows what they're doing. If you see other girls doing it, it feels like you can do it too.

Why is CoderDojo important?
Do you think it will have an impact on the future of IT? If you don't have parents who work in the IT industry, it's not something you really get to hear about. I think a lot of people are like I was, and don't realise how much programming can be used in almost everything. Having mentors and speakers come in and talk about how they use programming helps show the huge variety of jobs available with the skills we're learning in CoderDojo. I'm sure that this will help more people develop an interest in programming and take the jobs that can't be filled.

What are your interests outside of CoderDojo?
Outside of CoderDojo, I like music. I've been playing violin for 10 years.

Has CoderDojo influenced your thoughts about college? 
CoderDojo has definitely influenced my thoughts about college. I always knew I wanted to go to college but I only had vague ideas of what I might like to do and what I definitely didn't want to do. CoderDojo has made me look into an area I wouldn't have really considered before.

If you could change ONE thing about CoderDojo – what would that be?
I'd probably have to say the age limit because I'll be too old to be a CoderDojo member soon.

Does your school support STEM / IT subjects?
Are you in a girls only or mixed school? I go to Scoil Chaitríona, a mixed school. I think my school is quite good at supporting STEM as well as they can. They offer all three science subjects for the leaving cert every year even if there isn’t a huge demand. In my chemistry class, there are only has eight students. We did a tiny bit of computers in Transition Year, which probably would have been more impressive to me if I hadn't already started CoderDojo at that stage. I think they do a good job of supporting STEM and IT subjects in a very exam focused curriculum.

Are they actively encouraging students to be more involved in STEM subjects?
Our school tries to arrange talks and events for every year during science week and when suitable talks are on they arrange for us to go. So I think they do.

What do they teach you in your IT class? What are the pros and cons of your school IT class? 
We don't have IT classes in my school. In Transition Year, we used Weebly to make websites, using drag and drop and we did a bit of scratch. I'm glad that we had these classes but using a drag and drop program doesn’t give me a realistic experience of coding to people.

Catrina Carrigan 
DCU
CoderDojo Mentor