CoderDojo Web Programming Class – The Iron Yard from TheIronYard on Vimeo.

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The first #dojocon, took place less than a year ago in the Limerick Institute of Technology. Immediately after there was discussion in the community about doing a second conference to follow on the first’s success and continue to build the community, perhaps this time it could be further up the country to make it more accessible to other regions. This idea crystalised in a small committee of CoderDojo mentors who even with their busy lives, families, own Dojo’s and work; still found time to begin planning a magnificent event.

It was an overcast day several weeks before #dojocon2013 as several cars pulled up to the grand frontage of Slane Castle. Sitting beside CoderDojo co-founder James Whelton I had to pinch myself at the sight of this huge castle which would shortly be our venue. Of course James could not resist the temptation to stand on the Castle steps strumming some chords, and subsequently claim that he had “played” Slane Castle. After a short tour of the castle with the team we did not have to wait long as Lord Henry himself sped up and welcomed us to his humble abode. This ancient castle older than the United States of America seemed oddly juxtaposed to our modern technological aims, something Lord Henry himself pointed out in his closing speech (along with his UFO experience, living with Bono and salacious stories of the Castle)!

Slane Castle did not come without its challenges, despite its apparent size we quickly filled the seating capacity of the grand Ballroom; and the thick walls of the castle meant wifi was difficult (even after meters of cat5 cable had been installed by an intrepid Limerick Mentor Eugene Mcdonough). Despite the technical challenges, the sense of history combining with the modern, elevated the energy so that it was palpable in every room. The spirit of the movement flowed through the entire event and by the end, led to many a teary eye and raised goosebump of excitement.

On the first night the busy bar went silent as CoderDojo co-founder Bill Liao stepped up and opened his speech describing a fantastic (and possibly terrififying) world where children can – right now – program genetic sequences and pay a chinese company to produce the DNA which can then be grown in live cultures of bacteria; all to produce either a cure for cancer, solve world hunger, or make the worlds greatest super virus. The message is: this technology is already here, there is no point arguing over whether we should allow it or not; it’s time to teach our children values, empathy, and understanding so they use it for the benefit of society and not any alternative. As Bill left the stage, I was left with the heavy hand of responsibility placed on all of us who have taken up the mantle of CoderDojo mentorship to show our children a good way to live in a technological society. As just one of many speeches

The next morning a train of cars made the journey to the castle where CoderDojo co-founder James Whelton introduced a new initiative. The ‘Hello World Foundation’ is now working to support the CoderDojo website as part of a wider initiative to inspire young coders. As a member of this small team I am humbled by the awesomness of the CoderDojo community and hope I can give back something of value. In his speech James spoke of a world where Coding skills permeated every industry and allowed a better society. I want to be part of that.

Throughout the day brilliant workshops took place concurrently in three ‘streams’, too late I thought to suggest that the workshops be labelled ‘eddies’ in the stream. The schedule was so packed with discussion, thought and information it is impossible for any one person (or blog post) to capture it all. Needless to say everyone took a goody bag of food for thought home with them. Of particular note however, was one of the final speeches made by Kimberly Bryant founder of another initiative ‘Black girls who code’. Made with humility and understatement, Kimberly described her own story as a black woman who has had great success as an engineer but also how black girls particularly in poor neighbourhoods are triply disadvantaged in the tech community, held back by a culture which does not encourage coding. Most importantly Kimberly implored all the ‘young coding initiatives’ to burst their bubbles and work together on this shared issue of inspiring young coders.

By the time that was all over everyone was exhausted, happy to munch on the box loads of pizza delivered by the generosity of Domino’s and muse on the day behind them. Those merry few who stayed behind at the castle after the final speech and thankyou where rewarded by a bit of rock out from ‘the enemies’, and once the small crowd got going on the dance floor there was no stopping them; I just hope no one had a video camera.

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In the stream related to Running a Dojo, I was thrilled to be asked to speak alongside Rebecca Garcia about the CoderDojo Girls Initiative.  Rebecca works for the Hello World Foundation and is leading the CoderDojo Girls Initiative by connecting all the dojos who are looking to attract more girls to their dojos through various programs.

Slides from our @coderdojo Girls Initiative Panel w/@karenboconnell slideshare.net/garciarebecca/… #coderdojo #DojoCon2013

— Rebecca Garcia (@geekgirlweb) April 15, 2013

Technovation Challenge

Rebecca spoke about the girls at CoderDojo NYC who have submitted their Android Apps to the finals of the Technovation Challenge.  Check out the video pitch the girls submitted for Homework Hippo.

She also spoke about how important it is that as mentors, we should seek to inspire rather than instruct and relayed the story of a nine year old girl at CoderDojo NYC who has trouble paying attention.  This girl had no exposure to coding before coming to the dojo yet her parents have told Rebecca how they have never seen their daughter focus on something for such a long period of time.  She has since gone on to attend space camp.

Questions and Issues Presented During DojoCon

I spoke about why and how we have setup and run CoderDojo Divas at CoderDojo Limerick and some of the plans we have for the program.  We then opened up the session to the room for questions (so I hope I’ve remembered them all here – I’ve also added a couple of queries we’ve received since the conference):

• How did you attract girls to the girls only programs – as well as spreading the word through those already connected to the dojo, we suggested advertising in local press and putting up posters in girls and mixed schools.

• Do you change the content for girl only groups – our take on this was no.  Boys and girls can equally work with any of the technologies available at the dojo.  There may be differences in how they choose to implement what they learn e.g. different types of applications such as social vs. game play, but we do not intend to teach certain technologies to boys and others to girls.

• Suggestions for cross-gender mentoring – I’ll admit to being stumped by this one on the day and so wasn’t very helpful but having thought about it since here’s another stab at it.  While the dojos that have already started girl-only focussed groups or programs are led by female mentors with technical skills, there is no reason that a dojo with a motivated male mentor cannot start a girls only program. We suggested that you try to connect with your members through music or some other relevant pop culture and that is advice that applies to any and all mentors to retain members.  Cameron McEfee reminded us at his session later in the day of the importance of treating our members as people, not always thinking of them as kids, address them at their level.  Also, many dojos have great teachers who are mentors, who already spend all day every day with children, and it is worth observing how they interact with the members at the dojo and asking their advice about establishing successful mentor relationships.

• How do you reintegrate the girls into the main dojo – the aim for both the NYC and Limerick dojos is to ensure that more girls are coming along to the standard dojo sessions so that stereotypes of the tech industry as a male preserve are broken for both boys and girls.  Reintegration is a bridge either of us have yet to cross as these programs are just a few months old.  Here are some ideas I have of how we might achieve that (these should be familiar to Paul from the Monaghan dojo )

1. Remind the girls at every session that they are welcome to come along to the main dojo every time that it runs.

 

2. Run your girls only sessions parallel to the main dojo if possible so they are used to being in the same building or room as the other members.

 

3. Include other members of the dojo in the session when you invite speakers to the girls group so they can chat and learn together.  I have plans for speakers from a multinational, LIT, and local tech companies and the invite will be extended to all members of the dojo to come along to hear them if interested as they are not necessarily girl focussed topics but applicable to all interested in technical subject study or careers.

 

4. Create links between our members who are working on similar technologies.

 

5. Help the members create working teams for any competitions that are out there.  Between Smart Futures, Coolest Project, CISCO challenge, there is plenty to get them working on and support them to enter these competitions.

My feeling for the Limerick dojo is that ultimately we will continue to run a once a month girls only room as it helps to bring new people into the dojo who previously did not consider coming along.  Plus, some children are so busy these days that they can only come along once a month anyway and it means that they will have a stable group within the dojo that they regularly meet without losing touch with the dojo and the group altogether if we disbanded once we think it has served its purpose for our current group.

If you’d like to keep up to date with the CoderDojo Girls Initiative, please join the Google group at http://groups.google.com/group/coderdojogirls

All details of our hangouts and discussion topics have been published there so you can catch up on the conversation and ideas so far.  A huge thank you to Rebecca for bringing it all together and inviting me to share the stage with her last weekend.  Please add any comments or questions below or feel free to email or tweet us.

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Only one way to put it – DojoCon 2013 rocked in Slane Castle. Now what’s your next step?

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This is their video and it rocks…

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Mentors love coding and they want other people to love coding too.  You see, sharing makes people happy but sharing knowledge makes people even happier.  All the mentors in one Dojo know may alot about coding but all the mentors in all the Dojos know a whole lot more.  The conference was all about getting all the mentors in one place so that they could share ideas with each other.  Its pretty awesome that that place was a castle!

Some mentors traveled a long way to be at the conference.  Una, Bill, Shara, Rebecca and Kimberly came from America, Blaz and Jernej came from Slovenia, Joek came from Holland,  Martine from Belgium.  There were so many others that I can’t name them all!!

We all met up the night before for some food and drinks in Drogheda.  That really helped since alot of us have never met before.  We all very quickly became friends and told each other about our own Dojos.  This was really cool since some Dojos are different.  In Drogheda there’s pizza and in Birr they got a professor to tell everyone about Blackholes and in LA they have sun all the time!

On Saturday it was really busy but alot of people knew each other by now and everyone started chatting straight away.  There were lots of talks all day. David Cuartilles came from Sweden to tell everybody about how he invented a circuit board that can let you control a robot.  He’s got a website where you can buy one and lots of people are making robots now.  Upstairs there was an area where some seriously clever lads where showing people how to solder and also how to pick locks with pins.  I felt a little like James Bond until I broke the pin and everyone laughed!

There were TV Cameras, regular cameras and even a fella from RTE radio!  We also heard about the “Coolest Project Awards” which are coming up and you will be able to enter.  You’ll hear all about this in your own Dojo, so get coding!!  Stephen Howell made a program that will connect your Xbox Kinect to Scratch.  Its really easy to use and he made a game where you move your arms to control the characters.  He looked pretty silly showing us how it worked but he did beat his high score!

With all the talks and the chatting there were some really great ideas on how to make Dojos even better.  One idea is to have bigger and better projects and maybe kids in different dojos could work together more on different parts of the project.  Another idea is to teach mums and dads how to use scratch or even HTML and maybe they could become mentors.

There are loads of ideas but the mentors need to keep in touch with each other and figure out how they will work properly.  CoderDojo is still pretty new but if everyone keeps sharing ideas then all the mentors will have really cool things to share and CoderDojo can grow all over the world!

One thing is for sure though, every mentor, everywhere in the world loves sharing knowledge!  They’re not so good at sharing pizza!

If you’ve any questions about anything that happened, just ask!

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The competition to celebrate project form CoderDojo from all over the world was first held last year and plans for this year are now set.

This event was created to encourage, promote, support and showcase creativity in CoderDojo. Projects enable you to turn your most exciting ideas into reality. Creativity is the most important aspect of these awards, we want to be amazed by your tech ideas. You are the tech innovators and leaders of the future.

To find out more download the CoolestProjects presentation or visit the website http://coolestprojects.org/

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• Technovation HackDay Challenges

We completed the first Technovation challenge in creating the CrystalBall app and there are plenty more resources and tutorials in creating Android apps using AppInventor so for anyone who wants to continue working through those, we will be able to support them.

• LEGO Mindstorms Robot and AppInventor

For those looking for an extra challenge and want to continue working with AppInventor, we will have a LEGO Mindstorms Robot at the dojo for which you can program a remote control app through AppInventor. We have a basic model but here’s a video to show you the potential of programming robots.

• Develop your own Android App

Do you have an idea for your own Android App? Bring it to the dojo and start work on it!

• Introduction to HTML

We’ve had a request to start HTML and CSS work so we’re readying some tutorials for Saturday based on the excellent resources available from our own Coderdojo mentors and the curriculum used at Girl Develop It, San Francisco. And we hope to share whatever we can with other dojo members already working with these technologies in the Limerick dojo.

• Any requests?

We will be putting in place some short speaking sessions at various times over the next couple of months but are there any topics or other technologies you would like to see added to the mix? There’s lots to choose from and we will do our best to explore any of them that we can.

That’s it for now – see you on Saturday! Don’t forget to book your place.

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What is it?
The first Thursday of the month at 9pm GMT/10pm CET/4pm EST/2pm PST, we will spend an hour on Twitter discussing one topic relevant to Coderdojo. So the very first #dojochat will be at 9pm GMT May 2nd 2013. All relevant tweets should be tagged with #dojochat and the topics will cover anything and everything related to starting, running, participating in, and supporting a dojo whether it’s admin, mentoring, technology, logistics….

How does it work?
One week before #dojochat, a brief survey of potential topics will be released so you can vote for what you would like to discuss. You can submit topics at any time to Karen (@karenboconnell) via Twitter or email. The day before #dojochat, the topic will be confirmed based on the survey and you can start tweeting. Karen will be online between 9 and 10pm GMT to open the topic and prompt discussion between participants.

Who can join in?
Anybody interested in Coderdojo – mentors, members, parents, supporters! We’d love to hear what you have to say and how we can help each other out.

I missed this week’s chat – can I catch up?
Hop on the #dojochat hashtag at any time and the conversations will be archived to Storify so you can look back along any chats you missed or want to revisit.

Tell me if you think this is a good idea or a bad idea or even a terrible idea – comment below or tweet @karenboconnell.

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Thank You!

That means you! A huge thank you to everyone from James Whelton to the Pizza Delivery guy and to everyone in between. Each and every one of you played a vital role in what was a seriously cool event.  (Just look at the twitter stream to see the energy and buzz from the weekend)

A great conference is not about the organisation of a venue, the catering, the logistics or the lanyards.  A great conference is about the positivity of the attendees, the willingness to learn, to network and to engage with others.  We could not have organised that.

There’s wide acceptance that the speakers were great however even they left the conference buzzing with excitement, brimming with ideas and bursting with pride.  That wasn’t organised.

You, the attendees, did that!

So we’ll say it again. From us to you…..Thank You!

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