CoderDojo Brisbane Term One for 2016 kicked off a fortnight ago and by all accounts mentors are enjoying themselves as much as students at these exciting sessions!
John Harrison is the ICT Risk, Security & Compliance Manager at Brisbane City Council and currently acting as a mentor at Grange Library, one of two new CoderDojo Brisbane locations this term.
How was the session today?
“The session today was fantastic. Happy kids, satisfied and grateful parents, and motivated and engaged mentors.”
What have been some of the early highlights this term?
“The high point for me was the progress we made with six-year-old George.
“Despite his father working in IT, George really had no interest whatsoever in IT. Challenge accepted!
“Within short order I had George working in Scratch, and even got him excited enough to want to be the first child to demo his work to the entire group!
“His mum Sarah was also very surprised that George asked to return to CoderDojo next Saturday.”
Along with innovation, coding is one of the big buzzwords of the moment.
The Australian’s Natasha Bita wrote recently that “many of today’s school children will end up working in jobs that do not yet exist.”
She said coding skills would be crucial to keep pace in a fast-changing employment market that would require mental agility, flexibility and imagination.
Bita went on to quote a recent report on STEM skills from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which warned that “in a Digital disruption, 3D printing and automation would wipe out four out of 10 Australian jobs.” See her full story here.
Scary stuff for parents to contemplate, but for kids, coding is just a lot of fun.
CoderDojo Brisbane was the first CoderDojo program to be implemented in Australia when it started in 2013 as an initiative of Brisbane Marketing.
The program recently expanded to seven locations and has now held more than 220 sessions, reached over 1250 children and involved more than 440 registered mentors.
CoderDojo is an open source, volunteer-led, global movement of free coding clubs for young people.
CoderDojo Brisbane was introduced with the goal of fostering a greater level of interest in coding among young people, creating a new generation of digitally literate citizens, who have the ability not only to consume technology, but to create digital products.