Coder Dojo Gets Started in West Cork with a Bang in Rosscarbery

[Ann Donnelly]

Last night's session at the Celtic Ross Hotel, organised by Diarmuid Wrenne and Micheal Twomey, was very successful. There were about 70 children.  Only the organisers' kids had laptops, but we were able to show the attendees some of what they will be doing in future sessions.  With the data projector Diarmuid's daughter showed a basic web page she learned to do at the Cork Dojo, then Micheal's daughter showed her Scratch so they could demonstrate that to the group.  The children then grouped around the 5-6 laptops in the room to see more about Scratch, HTML, WordPress and some games that the kids were doing.

It was decided to run the Dojo every Monday from 7-9.   The next session will also be at the Celtic Ross.  I believe Diarmuid and Michael are talking to the secondary school about using their facilities. They would need to take out their own insurance to do so, so they need to look into the feasibility of this. I will post to the Coder Dojo Moderation Group to see if anyone else has encountered this or pays for a venue at all.

Micheal's wife is experienced in dealing with Child Welfare issues.  I will pass on to her the documents; safety statements, permission forms, etc.; set up by other Dojos and she can see if it suits this Dojo. I said I would get the Garda Vetting applications used in the Cork Dojo so that we could use those and have all organisers, mentors and parents helping out aply for vetting via LIT.

A note was distributed to the primary schools in Rosscarbery on Friday so all of the attendees were from those schools, and of that age group.  Some parents noted that they had teenagers that would also be interested and I talked about how this can work well in time as the older kids and those with more experience will group together and not feel out of place with so many younger children.

Most of the parents seemed fine that a parent would be required to attend along with their children, but there were a number of kids there that had come in groups with other children, so it may be an issue in future.  We discussed that it is important to make it a strong guideline that a parent must attend, but that if parents make the decision to send their child with another parent, it is up to them, but that other parent is fully responsible for the children placed in his/her care.  This will need to be clearly stated when the permission forms are set up.

A good number of children indicated that they had access to laptops, but a number did not, so they may need to account for the fact that there will be a number of kids sharing laptops - or siblings that won't come to every Dojo, but every other when it's their turn to use the laptop.

I will set up a page for the Rosscarbery Dojo on the Coder Dojo site and provide logins for Diarmuid and Micheal to update if needed.  I also need to check what email address they want to use and if they are happy to just have me tweet as CoderDojoWCork or if they will have their own Twitter and if they want to use one of their email addresses for a contact or get one via coderdojo.com (though I've been waiting awhile for one of this and started using my own).

Needed: mentors with coding and other IT experience, parent volunteers to help with admin