Just over one year ago, there was no Coderdojo in Tanzania and now there are two!

Coderdojo itself is an amazing story. The first Coderdojo club was hosted in Cork, Ireland by James Whelton. He had famously hacked into the iPod Nano and his schoolmates asked him to teach them about coding. This concept of peer tutoring has developed (with the help of co-founder Bill Lao) into the Coderdojo Foundation with over 1,100 clubs in 63 countries.

Last year I had a mission to set up the first Coderdojo of Tanzania. Thanks the the great teachers and principal of Debrabant, that plan came to fruition. Read about it here
This year I returned with a gift of 5 Raspberry Pi's from the Coderdojo Foundation. The teachers were amazed and delighted with the gift and have great plans for their use. The possibilities are endless, especially with all the support materials available on the Coderdojo website. 
Debrabant Secondary school is known as a very innovative school in Dar es Salaam. With 80 computers for use by the students, it is giving the students a great advantage preparing for their state exams. The school already participates in Young Scientist Tanzania and these Raspberry Pi computers might be incorporated in a project in the future!

This year my plan was to open a second Coderdojo in the COBET Street Children School. I spent most of my time with the COBET school last year and their teacher of that time Rodney. Read about it here
Since then Rodney has taken a job in the bank but his wife Irene has taken over as the full-time computer teacher. Rodney still maintains a huge interest and participated in the Train the Trainer sessions with Africa Code Week in June. He also takes some pupils in his spare time to do some further work on coding with them-basically hosting an unofficial Coderdojo! Some of the COBET pupils also took part in the Africa Code week training sessions in June. 
He took a morning off work to catch up with me and was delighted with my plan of registering COBET as the second Coderdojo in Tanzania. We registered it in it's Swahili name MEMKWA and Rodney is the proud champion. 

​Publicity and articles following the opening of last years Coderdojo in Debrabant:
 

• Coderdojo Foundation website: https://coderdojo.com/news/2016/09/12/tanzanias-first-dojo/
• Journal.ie Irish News Website:  http://www.thejournal.ie/coderdojo-fifth-birthday-2980639-Sep2016/  
  
• My account of summer 2016:   www.folens.ie/content/eilis-treacy
• Irish Primary Teachers Magazine p.50/51:  http://www.into.ie/ROI/Publications/InTouch/2017/April2017/InTouch_April2017.pdf​​

On Tuesday 2nd of August, the first Tanzanian Coderdojo ​opened its doors. Coderdojo is a free programming club for children and teenagers. It began in Ireland in 2011 and now there are over 1,100 clubs in 63 (now 64!) countries around the world.
Debrabant Secondary School is very fortunate to have two computer labs, a cinema room and very enthusiastic computer teachers. Along with two other volunteers we decided it was time to use all this technology and get the pupils coding. 

20 pupils signed up to join the Tuesday club and such was the interest, it was decided to run a second club on Thursdays for another 20 pupils. We began the session in the cinema room showing a finished game on Scratch. Needless to say, this sparked the teenagers interest! We then went through Lesson 1 from ICS skills, set a challenge and then it was time to code!

The verdict? A resounding success. All pupils involved were so interested and engaged. In fact, they would not go home! We went back to the cinema room to show the next skill and set the second challenge and the ninjas paired up, collaborated and discussed how to get their sprites moving up and down and over and back. We worked on an aquatic theme that day and there were some very interesting swimming on some screens! Overall the buzz, the laughter and the engagement made it a hugely successful first Coderdojo in Tanzania. 
The pupils of Debrabant are so lucky to have 3 wonderful computer teachers: Paulina, Equillax (Dojo Champion) and Reginald. We were also lucky to secure two volunteers: Nelson and Rodney. Rodney is the computer teacher in COBET and I have a feeling he could very well be the champion of the 2nd Coderdojo of Tanzania very soon.