Coderdojo Awesome News 20th August 2012

This newsletter was supposed to go out yesterday, but there is such a huge amount of news it is difficult to keep up. So the sooner we get some down on paper or email the better. So I will start at the beginning and progress in date order. As always this news is distributed to mentors who have expressed an interest so please forward this to any parent mailing lists which you have on file, or copy and paste the relevant information

Science Gallery Meet

The biggest news of this week was the fantastic workshop organised by Dublin CoderDojos, and held in the Science Gallery Dublin.  It involved teachers from CESI and mentors from CoderDojos from around Ireland, and one from Paris, coming together to share experience.  An extremely big ‘Thank You” to Elfie Rocher for the beautifully drawn graphic recordings, James Crook for facilitation and putting the event together and the Science Gallery for providing the space for free.

The facilitation model allowed the mentors, partners and teaching professionals in attendance to uncover some central themes to Coderdojo success. We will be able to build on this for the larger National Mentor Conference on 13th October 2012.  The results from the round table discussion and the graphic illustration of the day will be forwarded soon.

Big Fish Games – Tomorrow 4pm Cork

There is the opportunity for children with interest in building computer games, and perhaps have already built some (Harry Moran we are looking at you), to meet with the CEO of Big Fish Games and get some more insight into the Gaming industry. It will be tomorrow 22nd August 2012 in the Big Fish Games office in Mahon, Cork. This event is extremely short notice so don’t worry if you can’t make it because there will be plenty more opportunities in the future. A select invitation for those children we know are interested went out last night, but if you know someone that definitley wants to be there just hit the reply button.

GameJam Hackathon Competition – Darklight Festival Dublin

The Darklight festival will be holding a gaming hackathon to put together a game in a weekend. The event starts this Friday 24th August at the darklight festival. Its not a true hackathon because people cannot stay overnight on location but it is going to be alot of fun. Kids under 14 will need parental supervision – if a parent is willing to take someone else’s kid/children they will need a signed consent form from their parents. Kids over this age will need a signed permission slip from parents and have someone over 18 with them (this can be a member of Coder Dojo). Parents may need to operate in shifts so a consent may be needed for between different parents supervising different children. Read more here…
Contact your local Coderdojo mentor if you would like to organise a team from your dojo.

Glanmire Coderdojo – 8th September

We are delighted to welcome the start of another Coderdojo taking place in Glanmire in Cork, anyone from the Coderdojo community is welcome to attend and support the start of another Dojo. This Dojo is particularly significant as it represents small community halls who are struggling with similar issues country wide (e.g. broadband speed, community organisation).

Udacity Day – 15th September

Some people may have heard of the absolutely fantastic Udacity online university which is open to anyone and has had many high school students studying things such as building a search engine and bayesian mathematics. You can see their website at http://udacity.com. Well now they are holding a world meetup day, where local communities of Udacity students are meeting up all over the world. One event has already been registered to run at the same time as the Coderdojo on Saturday 15th September, if you would also like to register a meetup at your coderdojo then you can read more here…

Career Zoo – 22nd September

Hays International Recruitment as set a goal of establishing 100 new dojos around the country. As part of this initiative they will be organising a stand at the career zoo event in Dublin. If you would like to get involved then hit the reply button.

Intel Presentations – 29th September

The Intel Nominee’s are just getting stuck in, there will be more information on where to go on the day published on our blog. We also need to start a discussion in the events forum to see what each student is working on. We know of one kid in Cork who is developing a game in C++, Noel King in Dublin is organising this, so hit the reply button and we can put you in touch.

Mentor Conference – 13th October

The conference is now taking bookings at http://conference.coderdojo.com. Everyone is welcome including parents, mentors and kids. The day promises to be a fantastic event.

Pioneers Update

The Coderdojo pioneers initiative in the NSC building in Cork is still going strong with several parents dropping in with their children to work on specific real world challenges. This includes some of the children involved in the Intel demonstration. For those of you who don’t know this initiative was setup to fulfill the desire of many children and mentors to work on their own projects and real world challenges and we hope to expand it into more locations.

Digiweb Partnership – Free Hosting and Domain

Many people have heard about the free domain and hosting being offered by Digiweb. We have now had technical contact from them and you can read more here (offer now closed). We are still waiting for the actual signup form to be activated but please hit reply if you would like your name on the waiting list. The aim is to have one leader from each dojo responsible for submitting childrens names and activating accounts with Digiweb.

#holyrood dojo – Glasgow announce codoerdojo in the scottish parliament

After Bill’s fact travels to Scotland and the Glasgow Science Centre, we have received another invitation to hold a one time dojo event in the Scottish National Parliament. See the attached image. More information to follow.

Where’s Wally James?

James is currently holed up in Dublin working on some new online tools to help the Coderdojo community.

Overheard in the Forum…

“we should setup some sort of network between all the dojos, using arduinos.” Read More Here…

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