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The idea of setting up an after-school computer club turned into a much bigger venture than 19-year-old James Whelton could have ever imagined.
One year on from setting up CoderDojo – a club where young people learn how to code, develop websites, apps, programs, games and more – this social entrepreneur says the skills that these children are learning are making them into desirable employees in the future. And they’re having fun too.
I WAS A very nerdy kid at school, I wasn’t great at sport or academics particularly, but computers they were my thing. So as I was growing up, I was always playing around with computers and I picked up things as I went along.
There was really nowhere at the time for me to go and learn about this stuff. In secondary school I won a web development award, which got announced over the intercom. One guy came up to me after class, said he was interested in learning, and asked did I know how iPhone apps were made. That was the beginning.
We held a meeting to see how many people were interested in this area of technology. I didn’t think there would be that much interest, but more than 40 people showed up.
The after-school computer club was popular. I was teaching basic HTML and CSS to my classmates. However, as we approached summer, people were wondering if we could carry on the club, and we were also getting some interest from kids in other schools.
I had gotten some notoriety online after hacking the iPod Nano and I was asked to speak at the Dublin Web Summit. So I ditched my Leaving Cert mock exam to go speak at that, and afterwards I met Bill Liao, an entrepreneur and philanthropist with SOSVentures, who was interested in growing the project into something bigger than just an after-school computer club. We talked about the economic standpoint of things and how there is a massive shortage of software developers and people in tech. So together we came up with CoderDojo.
In June 2011 the first CoderDojo was launched in the National Software Centre in Cork. I really never imagined how popular it would be, or how fast it would grow. The Cork Dojo saw people travelling from Dublin frequently to attend sessions, so we decided to set up a Dublin Dojo in Google’s Montevetro building. The increasing success lead to setting up of more Dojos around Ireland and subsequently around the world. Internationally now we have 102 CoderDojos listed. We have 35 or so in Ireland running on an active basis.
CoderDojo is a very relaxed environment for kids. The volunteers are fantastic and really engaging. The youngest CoderDojo student is about seven or eight years old with the eldest being about 17 or 18.
The club has a couple of roles. From the social and economic standpoint it is filling the void of the education system, but it is educating kids in a new skill also. Socially, it gives young people a place to hang out and meet like-minded people and let them work on projects together.
A lot of kids also use it as a platform to achieve other things they want to do. There is one 13-year-old boy in Cork who wanted to develop a website all about trees in Ireland, so he learnt how to do it through our workshops. It really is interesting to see kids with ideas.
From day one we decided that it would all be free – money can often cause headaches and poison things. Since we opened, we have had kids from a lot of diverse social backgrounds and they really benefit from it.
I am currently employed by the same social entrepreneur company that Bill Liao runs, so I am a full time social entrepreneur with CoderDojo. I soon realised if I was not taking a wage I would be eating cat food. It is pretty amazing to be able to work with the project full time, and to see it grow throughout Ireland and the world. The one year anniversary of the initiative was the end of June – I can’t believe it has grown so fast.
We decided from day one to try and divorce ourselves from the education system. The education system is a very fickle thing. As we have built up a bit of weight, however, some schools have come to me voicing an interest.
I am so lucky to be able to see this grow from one simple idea to such a great venture. But the real strength behind the success of CoderDojo is the people behind it. The mentors and volunteers are why CoderDojo is what it is today. They have grown and defined it. CoderDojo has an incredible community thanks to everyone involved.
The sky is the limit as far as I’m concerned. If you have an idea, just go with it, you really never know what you can achieve.
James Whelton is the founder of CoderDojo. For more information, visit their website, Facebook or Twitter. James met Enda Kenny in the Dáil recently:
Photo: CoderDojo
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Shelly, if your standard of writing is anything to go by then your results should be excellent. Superb piece.
Best of luck Shelley and all the other leaving cert students.
You are correct that these results are not the end of the world, they are a stepping stone, question tomorrow will bring is which direction you will step towards.
I did my leaving 7 years ago, and still remember the fear in the weeks leading up to the results. I didn’t get what I wanted (perfectly respectable points etc, but 15 off what I needed), but I wanted to stress to ALL the LC students that there is ALWAYS another way in to the area you want. I ended up doing a PLC which fed into a degree course, and now I have better degree than I would have gotten had I gotten the points.
Please don’t get too bogged down in tomorrow, it really isn’t the end of the world.
Good luck to you all!!
Well said Lauren
If this was an essay for the English Leaving Cert Paper One, I’d have given her about a B3.
Just wait until all of these naive, apprehensive sods have to fend for themselves in the real world. A bit of tension over Leaving Cert results will seem like a walk in the park by comparison with struggling to get a job, pay rent and afford food and bills for oneself. Enjoy the scrounger days while you can, teenagers!
Whether this is an A or a B grade article depends on the ‘Purpose’. Remember? Purpose, Coherence of Delivery, Aesthetic Use of Language, Mechanics.
Dinosaurs –
Skinny at one end
Fat in the middle
and skinny at the far end. Full stop.
Sorry – I just thought it would be better to say something more sensible than the crap Orly has to say…………. get a life child ….. and perhaps a friend – you’re going to need some with that negative attitude………
I had all but forgotten P.C.L.M.! For one thing, the headline of the article; that which gives it “Purpose”, is a sentence which doesn’t make sense and doesn’t fit the appropriate criteria for a headline, displaying a lack of capital letters and questionable syntax. I should read:
“Fearing Expectations of Failure – How the Wait for the Leaving Certificate Results Feels” or something like that. What is there is just appalling.
Moreover, the “Wednesday” theme is unconvincing and juvenile – a Junior Cert tactic, perhaps; never something you would employ for your Leaving Certificate or at third level.
Peter, not having friends is definitely the biggest problem faced in the real world, after the Leaving Certificate. Oh woe, how I wish I had a friend!
:P
Agreed with the above poster that you’ve nothing to worry about if this is how you write. Come Monday afternoon, results will be gone and done and dusted.
the bell curve is there for a reason. statistically, everyone wants to do the same courses. if you want to be different, then you have to think outside the bell curve. would be interested to know what your top choices were on cao form were?
I’m getting my LC results tomorrow too. Oddly enough, I didn’t have that familiar looming feeling right until yesterday, I always thought I did much better than I needed to. Now I’m not so sure. Point is my results didn’t suddenly become worse overnight but my attitude changed, upon seeing nervous Leaving Certs and reading wonderful articles such as this. One thing you got to do is feel auspicious about tomorrow and don’t succumb to general panic.
It will all work out in the end, if it’s not working out it’s not the end!
P.S. Lovely Aesthetic language.
And in case any of you good people were wondering how Shelley got on??
600 well deserved points
worth 420 points in old money.
Rememer Shelly…… Trinners is for Winners!
WIT, TIT, LIT et al is for Losers!……………..
Funny…I know more people who’ve graduated from TCD who are now out of work than other colleges like DIT/DCU etc. Maybe if their courses were slightly more applicable to modern industry it wouldn’t be so….
Am I the only one who keeps having nightmares about tomorrow? The last one I failed everything except for Irish and…erm ..footing turf…which I got an A1 in…I think i’m spending too much time in the bog
I kept having nightmares for at least fifteen years. Mind you, I failed. Twice.
Its going to be the longest Tuesday of our lives.. isnt it?
The leaving cert is out dated. College students do assessments and exams throughout the year plus are able to repeat the exam again a couple of months later if they fail but we put our young kids through 5 years to 6 years of secondary school just so they can sit one exam – have a bad day and fail and have to repeat the full year.
Come on, if the college structure is good enough for our future doctors, lawyers why can’t it be used in secondary school?
How many teens have committed suicide over the leaving cert? One is too much!
Time for a change!
I am very glad you wrote this. One extremely high stakes exam can not accurately measure the knowledge, intelligence, or strengths of a person, yet it really can effect the rest of your life. It is completely unreasonable. I am writing an article about depression and suicide caused by leaving cert stress and results, and would love to hear from people.
It can only serve those who are good at taking tests, and it robs them of the joy of learning when test cramming becomes the norm.
If this article is any indicator, I’m sure you’ll do just fine. One thing to remember though is in some industries, your leaving cert does follow you around! No matter how much under graduate or post grad studies you do, companies still ask about your leaving cert results and from speaking to my recruitment department in work, it is a factor for applications. I’m speaking from experience in Accounting and I have a masters in the subject.
Shelley definitely got an A in English anyway!
Oh Shelley I’m so proud of you for writing this article!! It really sums up how most of us are feeling, and I too counted my weeks by Wednesday!
And Shelley definitely deserves an A in English, judging by all the work she put in the past two years :)
Good luck Shelley! I agree with the above that you will have nothing to worry about, what a fantastic piece of writing x
You can actually do many PLC courses without an LC (despite the name!).
i still get anxiety dreams about the leaving cert and im 25!
Haha, so do I! Only recently I dreamed I was being made sit the English Paper 2, but hadn’t read the texts!! Good luck to everyone, unfortunately the nerves are a rite of passage :(
The Leaving Cert. has been around for a while but most useful things we know have been around for much longer and evolved over millions of years. LC is a fairly short chapter in the big book. Basically, what I’m saying is that in the big picture, it isn’t significant at all.
I really enjoyed reading this piece , very well written and it brought back my own memories of the leaving cert results looming….that was 31 years ago…. Wow ! Well my son is waiting for his results tomorrow and I have no doubt that he did his best and it all boils down to the points system and will his efforts gain him a place in his chosen college/ University? We will have to wait and see. . . .
Good luck to every one who are awaiting their results and remember it is a stepping stone not the end , but a beginning to moving forward.
Well said Shelly. Best of luck tomorrow. Nearly over Thank God. x
There is a life after the Leaving Certificate. Remember that!
I remember only to well the fear in me the day I got my results 4 years ago. The 10 minute walk down to the school that felt over an hour, all the way getting phone calls. It seemed for every person happy there was one disappointed. When I got down I went in to the vice principle to pick up that brown envelope and sat in the tea room chatting my friends and after 2 cups of tea I finally gathered the courage to open it! Thankfully I got my points and went to NUIG. I was thrilled! I checked it the next year and I would not have gotten into the same course a year later had I tried. I would have missed out by 5 points!
Through out the summer before that day was the best of my life so far! No cares, no more school and if I’d not gotten into NUIG I would have been in AIT. I wasn’t pushed at the time
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