I have set up each weeks booking form right up until the 23rd and would like you all to now book the weeks you will be able to make it to the dojo.  We will make a decision later in the week on when to finish for the summer and we will email it out our finish date early next week.

Please book you children in here ONLY for the weeks you know  they can definitely make it:
http://coderdojolimerick.eventbrite.com/

Young computer coders team up with immunologist to build programs that will help scientists fight the flu virus.

Science Gallery, Pearse Street, Trinity College, Dublin 2.
Saturday, May 19th 2012
Admission: FREE (pre-booking essential)

CoderDojo is a free computer coding club run by young volunteers where other young people can learn how to develop websites, apps, games and more. It’s a place where coders can show each other what they’re working on, share what they’ve learned, and meet like-minded people.

Since December 2011, CoderDojo Dublin have been meeting every Saturday at Science Gallery and, on May 19th, this Dublin faction will take on a deadly killer – the flu virus.

In this special CoderDojo meet-up, Dr. Amir Khan from the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin will talk to the young coders about the science of flu vaccinations, and invite them to develop programs that will help scientists to produce a better vaccine.

In his talk, Dr. Khan will describe the amino acid strings that are found in common flu viruses and how immunologists use these strings to create flu vaccines. Comparisons of these strings are central to determining what will be the most effective vaccine for that year’s winter flu, and scientists use special computer programs for this. The CoderDojo coders will develop small programs that automate this amino acid comparison.

This talk is part of the Science Foundation Ireland ‘Speakers for Schools’ initiative, where SFI-funded researchers visit primary and secondary school students to speak about their work.

ENDS

LISTINGS INFORMATION:
EVENT: Coder Dojo at Science Gallery
LOCATION: Science Gallery, Pearse Street, Trinity College Dublin
DATE: Saturday May 19th
TIME: 1:00pm-4:00pm (Dr Khan’s talk will take place at 1:00pm)
ADMISSION: Free (pre-booking is essential)
BOOK: www.sciencegallery.com/events

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Eugene Eichelberger, Program Facilitator CoderDojo Dublin
E_ Eugene.Eichelberger@coderdojo.com  P_ +353 86 213 3206
T_ @coderdojodublin W_ coderdojo.com/dojos/dublin/

ABOUT CODERDOJO @ SCIENCE GALLERY
The CoderDojo Dublin began in the summer of 2011 as a branch of the CoderDojo movement founded in Cork by James Whelton. Designed to bring kids who want to learn to code together with mentors to guide them, CoderDojo has gone viral, spreading throughout Ireland and around the world. The Dublin Dojo started off small, with a few dedicated mentors inspired by the success in Cork. Today the Dublin Dojo, in a long term agreement with Science Gallery, runs weekly sessions for 80-100 kids. Through the continuing efforts of the Dublin Mentors, the Dublin Dojo at Science Gallery continues the CoderDojo mission of introducing in-demand ICT skills to children at the secondary school level. More information about CoderDojo Dublin or guidence in getting involved please visit: coderdojo.com/dojos/dublin/

ABOUT SCIENCE GALLERY
Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin is a world first, a space that ignites creativity and discovery where science and art collide. Since opening in early 2008, over 900,000 people have experienced 20 exhibitions ranging from light to love, from sustainability to infection. Science Gallery’s 21st exhibition, HAPPY?, is part of a vibrant 2012 programme to celebrate Dublin’s tenure as European City of Science including their previous show EDIBLE, and upcoming shows HACK THE CITY, NANOLAB and GAME. Science Gallery is an initiative of Ireland’s leading research university, Trinity College Dublin and is kindly supported by the Wellcome Trust as founding partner, and by DELL, Google, ICON and Paccar (our Science Circle supporters). Science Gallery receives government support from the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht and Science Foundation Ireland.

ABOUT SCIENCE FOUNDATION IRELAND
Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) is the national foundation for research in Ireland.
SFI invests in academic researchers and research teams who are most likely to generate new knowledge, leading edge technologies and competitive enterprises in the fields of science and engineering underpinning three areas: Biotechnology, Information & Communications Technology (ICT) and Sustainable Energy & Energy Efficient Technologies (Energy).
SFI also advances cooperative efforts among education, government and industry that support its fields of emphasis and promotes Ireland’s reputation for science and engineering research.

We will be returning on the 12th of May for a 7 week run leading up to summer break with the last Dojo on the 23rd of June.

We are looking to put together an Administration Team of non-techie parents who would like to help out. It would be the team’s job to make sure there is someone there each week to look after check ins and registration. This person would also be door person while the Dojo is open to meet and greet late comers and visitors. If we had this in place we could give more of our time to mentoring the kids. Please email back if you are willing to be on this team and let us know how many Saturdays you can do a month.

Regards,
Coder Dojo Limerick Team.

We need old laptops! We need these because some kids don’t have anything portable or any computer at all. They still want to learn and we still want to help. You can help us by donating older laptops or netbooks to us. We will have them professionally wiped clean and put to better use than gathering dust in a cupboard.

We would also appreciate any donations of clean USB keys (for kids to take work home to desktop in the absence of a laptop) or extension cords for use in LIT Downtown Centre as our numbers continue to increase.

If you can help us we’d really appreciate it! If you’re curious about Coder Dojo come along some Saturday – bring your kids! We’re hoping that more involvement from the local Limerick business community, either through donations of equipment or time at Dojo sessions, will reap benefits for both the kids to whom we are teaching an increasingly vital lifeskill and for those businesses continuing into the future.

The Kinsale Dojo is open this evening, 16th March 2012, as usual. It is taking place at Balincurra House. See more at: http://zen.coderdojo.com/dojo/54

Also watch out for our Harry Moran on tonight’s (16th March 2012) Late Late Show on RTE1 where he’ll be showing off PizzaBot and talking about Coder Dojo.

The Dojo has been steadily growing since last September when we had around 30 kids in the LIT Hartnett Enterprise Acceleration Boardroom each week. 2 weeks ago we had 115 kids and over 20 Mentors / Supervisors spread across 4 rooms in the LIT, Georges Quay Campus. Last week we had 90 kids and completed a very successful fire drill, the fire officer was very impressed with the speed and calm nature in which the building was cleared.

As the number have grown we are running into some issues with providing power to all Laptops so we would ask that all members fully charge their laptops before coming each week. LIT have been great and installed extra wall sockets however we would also be grateful for donations of power extension cables of 3m and up with 4 or more sockets. These will be kept in the Georges Quay Campus for use only by the Dojo each week.

I have also attached below an article that will be included in next weeks Limerick Chambers newsletter requesting donations of old laptops as we understand that not all kids can bring laptops. We hope to get donations of a few to have for use by kids without laptops each Saturday.

We know that some of our members are traveling long distances to come to Limerick each week. Last week kids who have to come to the Limerick Dojo since January took up their places mentoring new members at the first Coder Dojo in Athlone.
See >> http://zen.coderdojo.com/dojo/34

Today the First Coder Dojo Thurles will be run in LIT Thurles.
See >> http://zen.coderdojo.com/dojo/65

The first Coder Dojo Ennis will be help on Sat 24th in Flannan’s School.
See >> http://zen.coderdojo.com/dojo/66

We are also currently working with a group in Ennistymon to help in opening a new dojo there shortly.
See >> http://zen.coderdojo.com/dojo/64

Regards,
The Limerick Coder Dojo Team.

CoderDojo has exploded, with Dojos opening from Newry to New York to Tokyo. It has been and continues to be awesome and its all due to the brilliant volunteers and people involved to make it what it is. A lot of young people from various background have benefited, a unique environment has been spawned and truly amazing community has come about.

High-5 everyone, you rock!

So with all this insane scaling, there was an issue, keeping track of Dojos was getting hard, in order to have a Dojo listed you needed to contact a volunteer with access to WordPress on CoderDojo.com and same story again with updating. Not a very scalable system eh? There had, from the beginning, been discuss between myself, Bill, Ben and a few others about creating a web app/network/whatnot for CoderDojo.  Ben and I talked more on it. About 2 weeks ago, on the flight to go help out at the first American CoderDojo I hacked together ‘Zen’.  I showed it to Ben and Bill and got a few people to do listings on the staging build. Ben vetted the code, did some tweaks and worked his magic. 2 weeks later, in the departure lobby, waiting for my flight back to Ireland, Zen was deployed to Orchestra from EngineYard who are providing and sponsoring the cloud hosting (and we love them very much). Also protip, don’t deploy just before a flight, incase there are bugs and whatnot, it was kinda silly of me.

With Zen, I kept in mind the common attributes of Dojo listings and what could be useful to Dojo coordinators. People could go create a Dojo listing and maintain, add some bells and whistles like a Google map and eventbrite booking widget. It is still pretty early stages, but there has been good feedback and a lot of plans for it. Dojos when created, are unverified, meaning they are omitted from the main list. Admins on a regular basis verify Dojos.

So here it is, Zen: http://zen.coderdojo.com

Even better, here is the source code: https://github.com/coderdojo/zen (Hell yeah, open source)

If you have any suggestions or issues, please open one on GitHub issues: https://github.com/coderdojo/zen/issues

Happy hacking and more to come,

@JWhelton

A Church or a Dojo?

This week we had the amazing Highlanes Gallery as our venue. Highlanes is an early 19th century Franciscan church that we gifted to the people of Drogheda by the order who have a 760 year association with the town.

This week it became a temple of code … very cool!

Scratch and Kinect

Stephen Howell (@saorog) impressed with an awesome demo of Scratch and Kinect! We had kids ‘as the controller’ in Scratch games which was really cool. Thanks Stephen, we hope Stephen will lead the next Dojo on more advanced Scratch topics.

This fantastic Municipal Art Gallery is now our home and we want to sincerely thank Aoife Ruane and all the team at Highlanes for allowing us to use such a cool space. See http://www.highlanes.ie for more details on the venue.

James Whelton will join us this Saturday also for a discussion on the CoderDojo belt system as we’ve been feeding in ideas here.

There are just a few places left for this Saturday so please book online at http://coderdojo-drogheda.eventbrite.ie if you would like to attend.

We now have 3 large rooms to cater for all the attendees and thanks to huge support from LIT, our network has been significantly upgraded as well as extra power points installed.  Nothing is too much trouble for the ever reliable Jim, the porter, who has helped with all sorts of requests from bin bags to storage, power cords to extra chairs and tables.  One of our mentors, Pam O’Brien, has written excellent blogs on Coderdojo Limerick which you can check out here.  If you are interested in all sorts of Maths-related topics, use of technology in the classroom/lecture hall, and education in Ireland, follow Pam on Twitter.

Looking forward to this Saturday – everybody’s welcome to join.