Life as a CoderDojo Mentor

I have been mentoring in DCU CoderDojo since May 2012. I heard about DCU CoderDojo from a friend on Facebook who was mentoring in Kilkenny.

I wanted to check out what it was all about but had no intentions of mentoring for several reasons. More than anything I felt I wouldn't have the confidence or the ability to teach. I decided to bring my nieces along to see if this would be something they'd be interested in. While there I got chatting to Stephen Howell one of the mentors about CoderDojo and I changed my mind. If I could help my nieces, I could help other children.  As I was on maternity leave, I felt mentoring would be a great way for me to keep in touch with programming. 

It has been an amazing journey working with the young people attending @DCUCoderDojo. We teach gaming and then move on to what is called CoolestProjects.  CoolestProjects is where young people use what they learned in CoderDojo to develop their own projects for a competition.

In DCU Chris (15) and Chloe Burke(16) worked on a project called Theorem App for the competition and Caitriona Carrigan (15) worked on a website where the user could play the guitar, drums or piano.

Noel King, the lead mentor in DCU and Paul Phelan from Intel devised CoolestProjects and an accompanying awards ceremony which is held annually to showcase the creativity and talent of the young people attending CoderDojo.

I was blown away by the talent for the Coolest Projects Awards 2012 and very inspired. The excitement on the day was palpable and the projects were incredible. Maciej Goszczycki (15) the winner wrote his own programming language!

Since CoolestProjects, Chloe has spoken at the Dublin Web Summit “a global gathering of the world's leading thinkers and doers in technology”. While Caitriona's website has inspired a game which is making its way in the UK GCSEs. 

Parents play a huge role in CoderDojo and with their help extraordinary things happen. Mike Kehoe is one of those extraordinary parents, as he helped DCUCoderDojo visit the IBM campus where we had a brilliant day coding and getting tours of the campus, organised by Mike. Since then, Fred Raguillet and an amazing team of mentors have started a CoderDojo in IBM Dublin and plans are afoot for one in IBM Galway.  

I was lucky enough to help start up CoderDojoGirls. This came about after a chat with Noel where it was observed that while girls start CoderDojo they tend to drop out a few weeks later. Noel asked myself and another mentor, Sarah Doran, if we'd be interested in starting up an all girls CoderDojo. We loved the idea! CoderDojoGirls@DCU now has an amazing team of girl mentors and roughly 30-40 girls attending every week. 

I have seen changes in the group. I can remember when the class started, the girls were quiet, now they're more vocal - they'll look for help when they feel they need it. I am even seeing more girls now attending our mixed classes.

Dublin City University (DCU) hosted the second Coolest Projects event on at the end of August with amazing prizes sponsored by Intel.  We had over 300 visitors and over 50 projects on display, this was a fun packed inspiring day.

CoderDojo members like Lauren Boyle, (8) created an app that teaches you how to bake cakes. Mitchell Dey (13) built an impressive stand-alone ‘arm’ that can articulate and grab, and it even has a light. Niamh Scanlon (11) created a website for people who want to learn how to code, or improve their coding skills. With such an array of talent on display who could not be uplifted.

In addition to all of this, we had flying drones and security demonstrations and amazing guest speakers, Joe Hogan (Openet), Con Moran (Crainn), Harry Moran (PizzaBot) and Shane Curran (Libramatic), were the order of the day. I was so proud of all the members who contributed, to see their work and to see so much talent in one room was so exciting. All I can say is roll on Coolest Project 2014. 

Life as a CoderDojo mentor is full of creativity, inspiration, positivity and innovation. James Whelton and Bill Liao, the co-founders of CoderDojo, have created something so special which nurtures goodwill amongst the volunteers. As a mentor I work with an incredibly supportive group of people, who make amazing things happen. There are so many exciting things coming up in CoderDojo. We'd love it if you could join us. 

If you’d like to become a mentor go to www.coderdojo.com. Check out this year’s entrants in the CoolestProjects Awards.

Niambh Scullian
Connect with Niambh on LinkedIn

@DCUCoderdojo

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Job creation in the cloud

Cloud computing is a hot topic at the moment. The media suggest it will be integral to the whole IT industry in the future but what does this mean for job creation in Ireland?

Over the last few months I’ve read a number of articles and reports and attended a number of industry events on cloud computing. Since I recruit in the IT sector, I want to know – How many jobs will cloud computing create in Ireland? What type of jobs? And how do we train our current and future workforce for them?

Globally, cloud computing is still in its infancy.  We have cloud based organisations and talent based in Ireland and there is an opportunity for us to be global leaders in the cloud. The recent Goodbody report, concludes that by 2014 cloud computing sales by Irish firms could reach €9.5 billion per annum and provide 8,600 jobs as current IT activities migrate to the cloud, with a further 2,000 jobs being created in SME’s in the supply chain.

Alan Cooney from EMC recently spoke on their company’s journey into the private cloud. Alan shared his view on the roles that will still be important as we immerse ourselves into the cloud, these include: Systems, Storage, Backup and Recovery, Data Center Networks and Security. However there will be a large number of new positions to serve the Virtual Infrastructure Management and Virtual Infrastructure Architecture areas, these will include: Cloud Architect, Cloud Administrator, Capacity Planner and IT Automation Engineer.

So, in the next three years over 8,000 jobs will be created, including roles that don’t even exist at the moment. How do we make sure that we have the people to fill these new roles? We have over 440,000 people on the live register, many of whom are educated to degree level, but are out of work due to the downturn in their chosen sector. What about a government initiative to re-train out-of-work engineers and other professionals for IT jobs?

 I recently heard a pre-dinner speech from Gerard Kilcommins, President of the American Chamber of Commerce Ireland which summed up how the future generation should be thinking- “It is all about education and encouraging the next generation to pursue degrees that lead in to the jobs of the future and in turn give Ireland a future in this exciting area.”

Equally important is the upskilling of the current IT professionals. Are they considering how they will transition their experience and training to enhance their own potential in this evolving process? They would need to, or they may get left behind.