DojoNews – May 2016
Perth has more Dojos than any other city in the world
Congratulations everyone…Perth is now home to 48 Dojos, with 50 Dojos in Western Australia! We saw a large jump in our numbers recently thanks to Ross from CoderDojo Global assisting with verifications, and it just keeps growing! These new bragging rights are testament to the AMAZING work Karen Wellington has done in helping to build and support such a wonderful WA community of Dojos. As Karen always says, “YOU ARE SUPER IMPORTANT”, and we can’t echo this enough! It’s always a pleasure to see how supportive the online community is, and how helpful you are when it comes to running and organising events, welcoming new Dojo family members, and just generally being cool. Hopefully we will see this number continue to grow throughout WA, helping more and more Ninjas to develop skills and passion in this important area. The future of WA is in good hands.
Kancho Calling – Dojo Census
In order to get a better picture of the Dojos in WA, we are asking Champions to please complete a VERY short Dojo census. This includes questions as to how the Foundation can better serve the community in 2016, and whether your Dojo is looking for mentors.
As well as improving our support of the community, we want to begin envisioning the next step for Dojos in WA, asking the question, “after CoderDojo, then what?”. Perhaps this will mean developing industry links and internship programs for Ninjas, perhaps it will mean helping Dojos to identify Black Belt Ninjas that we can support; however this unfolds, your feedback will be central to the process, and the Dojo census is the first step in achieving this. Thanks for your support.
Welcome, Rebecca
In March we welcomed Rebecca Loftus, who has stepped into Karen’s role as the CoderDojo WA program manager. Rebecca has spent the past four years living and working in Karratha, as the Head of the Science Department at St Luke’s College. She moved back to Perth at the beginning of the year and is currently completing her doctoral studies at Murdoch University. Her research area is Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) education, which is a new model for education that, coincidentally, has a lot in common with the already established CoderDojo model. Welcome, Rebecca.
Welcome, Neve
Karen hasn’t had too much time to relax with the arrival of her mini-Ninja Neve Aniko Wellington on the 24th of April. We wish Karen all the best on this new adventure, and look forward to her return towards the end of the year. Welcome, baby Neve.
New Online Home
Our new Website went live in April. Huge shout out to Karen Wellington and Robyn King, for driving this change, and thanks to the folks at Draw History for doing such an amazing job! We are calling on the community to send us news, pictures and stories from your Dojos so that we can share the good work that you do with everyone in WA, and beyond.
