Inis Communications director and co-ordinator of Derry CoderDojo, Trish Hegarty, attended the first ever Coderdojo conference in Limerick (LIT) at the weekend. “There was a great turnout and it was a superb opportunity to make connections, debate the issues and plan together for the future of the Coderdojo movement,” said Trish.
Derry Coderdojo mentor Dominic Kay, who works for Oracle, also attended the conference.
The conference looked at learning from each other on setting up and maintining new dojos, registration systems, child protection, and badges and belts assessment in the morning before turning to technical content issues in the afternoon. In terms of the belts and badges system, there was general agreement that in order to adhere to the Coderdojo ethos, the emphasis should be on recognising children’s achievement rather than setting up a national assessment system, which could be difficult to agree or implement.
It now looks like the next gathering will be in the Drogheda/Diundalk region after Easter 2013.