DojoNews – June 2016
Visiting Ireland – Home of CoderDojo
On the 7th of June, I had the opportunity to visit the CoderDojo offices in the super cool Dogpatch Labs in Dublin, Ireland. Ross (who many of you may know as the Dojo verification overlord and developer incroyable) was able to show me around the offices and I got to meet the Dublin team. Ireland is the birthplace of the CoderDojo movement, with the first Dojo established In July 2011, in the National Software Centre in Cork. Ross was able to show me some of the awesome projects that the team are working on, and he was keen to hear how they might continue to improve their support for us in WA. Go raibh míle maith agat! Thanks for letting me visit!
Also, congratulations on reaching 1000 Dojos across the globe as of last month…. 62 of which are from Western Australia.
Ps: on the way home from the meeting, my taxi driver was the parent of a Dublin Ninja.
CoderDojo: The Classroom of the Future
Over four Thursdays in May, CoderDojo WA presented to approximately 300 lead primary school teachers as part of the Department of Education’s professional learning event on the Digital Technologies curriculum.
Apart from a Cook’s tour of the CoderDojo program, the focus of the presentation was on 21st century learning, and how the CoderDojo model of fun, flexible learning within a STEAM (STEM + Arts) space might just be the future of education.
At the event, it was announced that the government is investing $2.7 million in new teaching and learning resources for all public primary schools, which includes a digital technologies resources pack of “programmable, interactive robots, electronic engineering resources to create real world projects and touch tablet devices preloaded with numerous coding apps.” Good news for any Champions in public primary schools.
National Year of Digital Inclusion
In 2016, GoDigi, a partnership between Infoxchange and Australia Post, launched the National Year of Digital Inclusion (NYDI): a series of National Conversations and Pop-Up events that will be held across the country. Go Digi is a national four-year digital literacy program with the goal of supporting more than 300,000 Australians to improve their digital skills. Robyn King was at the NYDI Conversations event in Perth on the 18th of May to discuss how the CoderDojo WA community of Champions and Mentors works together to improve digital literacy for our Ninjas. Her presentation was entitled “Creating Coding Communities”.
The event included keynote addresses from Senator Scott Ludlam and Dr. Kate Raynes Goldie (Recently named one of MCV Pacific’s most influential women in games for the second year running). Other speakers at the event included:
- Michelle Sandford – Microsoftie, TEDxPerth Speaker, Tech Girl Superhero and one of MCV’s 100 Most Influential Women in Games 2016
- Lainey Weiser – Just Start IT
- Rebecca Ong – Manager of Participation and Learning at the State Library of Western Australia
- Debra Summers – President of the Public Libraries WA Inc
- Dr Helen Cripps – Lecturer in the School of Business and Law, ECU
Well done, Robyn, and congratulations to the GoDigi team for hosting such a successful event. To learn more about GoDigi visit their website: www.godigi.org.au
Australian Computer Society State Conference WA
Robyn also presented at the Australian Computer Society’s state conference on the 19th of May (busy lady). At the event, Robyn joined speakers from CISCO, Boundlss, Woodside Energy and Human Sparks, and was also invited to present on a panel including Louise Smith, Australian Computer Society, Apara Chokshi, Bloom Labs, Tom Goerke, CISCO, and David Cook, ACS WA Branch Chairman. The topic of their discussion was “The Social Impacts of Technology: Good or Evil?”. Their discussion included topics such as end user licence agreements, wearable technology, the effects of technology on our health, whether artificial intelligence is an exciting development or a potential threat.
