Creating Content: Thomas’ TY work experience @CoderDojo

Thomas Carrigan, is an attendee and mentor at DCU CoderDojo. He recently completed a transition year work placement here at CoderDojo HQ.

Thomas started attend DCU CoderDojo in 2012, representing the Dojo a year later at Web summit 2013. In 2014 he won a CoderDojo Coolest Projects Award for his Galileo Robot, coded using “C” programming language.

Here he explains how he initially choose CoderDojo and his experience working on content that can be used by Dojos Worldwide.

How did you first get involved with CoderDojo?
I wanted to learn how to code and I heard about a coding club in DCU and convinced one of my friends to go with me.

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What made you decide on CoderDojo for your work experience?
Since I was already mentoring in CoderDojo DCU, I thought it’d be interesting to work at the CoderDojo Foundation to create some content that could be used in CoderDojo DCU and other Dojos.

What were the main things you developed/created over your work experience?
I developed a Sushi Card style course for the Arduino and Intel Edison/Galileo, and a few tutorials on how to Make a Minecraft Server.

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What was your favourite project to work on?
The Minecraft Server Project was fun because I was also teaching myself as I was going along, I don’t play Minecraft often and I had very little experience with creating Minecraft Servers.

How will the projects you developed benefit the CoderDojo community?
I hope that the Projects I have developed will give Dojos some extra material to help teach things, like how to get started with Arduino based devices.

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What challenged you?
Thinking of content that would be of the right level and that would teach a range of skills was the hardest part.

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Going forward, how do you think the experience may benefit you?
Working at the CoderDojo Foundation gave me experience working in a creative environment to help contribute to a community which was fun and challenging and I think it will help me in the future if I decide to create more content.

All of us here at The CoderDojo Foundation would like to thank Thomas for his excellent content creation and contribution to the mission of CoderDojo.

We’re looking forward to the release of the content developed by Thomas on Kata, our open source knowledge database, in the near future.