CoderDojo continues in an age of pandemic

The children who are members of the Mullingar CoderDojo are getting an introduction to more than just computer programming these days – they are also getting a taste of the world of remote working and are becoming familiar with the Google Teams programme.

“The numbers are down a bit but we are still running,” says Brian Browne, one of the five mentors who for years have been giving up their Saturday mornings to help out youngsters anxious to learn how to write their own programs. Even now, in Tier 5 lockdown, they are keeping the enthusiasm of the youngsters up via online sessions.

The CoderDojo concept is one of the gifts Ireland has given to the world of computing, and since the first CoderDojo club was established in Cork in 2011, the idea has spread to 69 countries and there are almost 1,300 clubs up and running worldwide.

The Mullingar CoderDojo club was set up early in the early days of the evolution: it got its first mention in the Westmeath Examiner in February 2013, but the club had already been running for some time by that stage, making it now one of the longest-running in the country. The team of mentors comprises, besides Brian, Gerard Keena; Paddy Hand, who have been there from the start; Trevor Murphy and James Gallagher.

In pre-Covid times, the club operated out of premises at Forest Park: now it is the magic of technology – in the form of Google Meet – that is enabling these young programmers to keep in touch.

“We normally work out of the Mullingar Charity Variety Group’s premises,” says Brian.

“Most kids are into games so we would start them off on the first day they come in with a very simple game; and we would introduce different topics then: they learn how to draw shapes they learn about maths and co-ordinate geometry – it is very hard to do anything on computers without maths. They would learn a bit about music on the way and about drawing stuff.

“We would usually have two or three groups working on different things at a time, using Scratch usually to get people started off. It is not really a programming language as such, but it’s a good way for people to learn about programming structures and how to build a computer program before they move on to more advanced stuff. Then we can move on to HTML, CCS, and JavaScript.

“What we do is really up to the people taking part – the kids themselves: they are supposed to come to us with what they want to do and we would really help them to move in that direction.”

No exams, no homework

Brian explains that the mentors aren’t teachers, and the club doesn’t operate like a classroom; there are no exams; there is no homework.

“The idea of CoderDojo is that they learn from each other; it’s self-directed learning I suppose,” he says, going on to make clear that there is a very definite philosophy guiding the operation.

“The ‘Dojo’ part of the name comes from martial arts because if you are involved in martial arts, every student is supposed to become a teacher. You move through the belts but as you move up, you help the people coming up behind you.

“It’s supposed to work the same way with us.

“So the kids that come in to us are supposed to be in the first instance working on their own projects; they should be collaborating in groups; they should be standing up on their hind legs and presenting their ideas to the rest of the group – because that’s another thing we encourage them to do – present their work and to work in teams; it’s not all about the coding skills.

“But as well as working on their own projects, they’re supposed to be teaching and passing the knowledge on to the other pupils coming behind them.”

It doesn’t always work out quite as neatly as that, he admits. “Not every child is interested in passing it on: they mostly want to get on with their own projects and be left alone to work on them,” says Brian, adding that some of the really enthusiastic youngsters will spend their free time at home refining their programs and will be excited at the chance to demonstrate them to their young coding friends and to the mentors.

That won’t always apply, as some families impose “screen time” rules on their children – and then again, not all children have a computer at home, but that is no bar to participation.

“We have our own computers and so if they don’t have a computer, it doesn’t matter. They can come down to us and we are usually able to accommodate them.”

Some CoderDojo clubs allow six- to seven-year-olds join, but Brian – a father himself – admits that the view in Mullingar is that is a bit young: “We would prefer not to see children until they are about eight because it’s just hard for them to sit still for hours. But we would regularly get people turning up with kids younger than that – kids who are just six or seven; and some of them are great, they will stick at it, but they do get a bit squirmy, and you can’t blame them.”

The club is happy for attendees to keep coming right in to their mid-teens, but realistically, few do: “They come between about eight and 12 but as they get older, other distractions come along, and they only have so much time – and they have so much choice these days – so as they get older, they generally start to lose interest. But I suppose we would have had in the past teenagers up to 16 or 17. But typically now they might stop at about 15.”

Garda vetted

To be a mentor, it is necessary to be garda-vetted and to undergo child protection training; and, says Brian, the mentors’ responsibilities don’t begin and end with the Saturday morning session – which can in itself prove too great a commitment for some volunteers.

“Normally we give two hours on a Saturday and then there is the usual extra bit outside of that – you have to think about lesson plans and what you’re going to do for the year, and things like fundraising. So it is a bit of a commitment.”

What keeps the volunteers committed is a mixture of things – their own memories of their early days coding; a desire to see enough people from rising generations take up the cudgel in the future.

“I suppose at the time I got involved, my kids would have been quite young and it was a combination of getting involved with something for your own kids and also just trying to get more people involved in programming,” says Brian.

“I suppose it’s the kind of thing that to get involved in you don’t need a lot. If you have any old Windows PC that is falling apart, you can still use Scratch or you can write a program in a simple text editor program; you don’t need a lot to get started.

“I suppose we are nearly all of an age when we would have been kids ourselves from the first 8-bit computers came out, like the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum,” says Brian.

“In the early ’80s there was this sort of home computer revolution and really if you wanted to get anything out of a computer in those days you had to learn how to code it yourself – and that stands to you over time.

“I wouldn’t consider myself a programmer, but knowing a little bit about computers is a useful thing – and it can turn into a rewarding career if you really get the bit between your teeth and start getting into programming. You can go anywhere with it really.

“But the problem that we would have seen is that computers these days are too easy for people: a child can pick up an iPad and they’re straight into anything they want – games, applications, whatever.”

Convenient, yes, but it means they have no understanding of the processes behind the application, nor of the potential.

Getting girls involved

“We are always looking for volunteers,” Brian says.

“If you contact any Dojo in the country, they would say the same thing. There are two hard things about CoderDojo: getting volunteers to come and stay involved; and the second thing is getting girls involved.

“That’s been the bane of the group since the start. It has been long recognised that girls aren’t as involved in the IT business as they should be. I think there’s a perception out there that computers are for boys. But it’s a ridiculous thing to say, and in fact if you look at the Apollo II mission to the moon, all the lead programmers behind that were women – and black women at that.

“There is a whole separate movement that started up after CoderDojo in the States called Black Girls Code, to try to get girls involved. The Dojo in UCD has a special session that’s for girls only”

Brian welcomes the fact that schools have started teaching coding and it is available as a Leaving Cert subject in some.

The CoderDojo team in Mullingar largely align their sessions to the school year: “Normally we would start getting the word out in August and you could have 50 or 60 kids turning up, but after a couple of weeks that tails off – some kids think they’re just going to sit there and play computer games the whole time.”

The pandemic has had a big impact: “The numbers are way down – we will be lucky to get 10 turning up.”

The online sessions are kept to an hour as they can be exhausting compared to a real-life.

That said, it is working and Brian believes it is important to keep it going at some level. “All the rules are gone out the window at the moment: we just started a beginners group last week. Because the numbers are so low, we can do it differently.”

To get in touch with Mullingar CoderDojo, see their Facebook page – facebook.com/coderdojomullingar/.

Also, email them Mullingar.ie@coderdojo.com.

See also: coderdojo.com/movement/.