New Perspectives in Science Education

DojoMór is a day devoted to coding for children between the ages of 7 and 17. Thousands of children come together on the same day to code in multiple third level institutions nationally around Ireland. This program stems from a global coding community, CoderDojo [1], that was founded in Cork, Ireland, in July 2011, where children meet once a week to learn code through self-learning in a Dojo. The first MegaDojo was established in Belgium in 2015 [2], where in excess of 1024 children participated in coding. MegaDojo made its way back to Cork where it has, over time, morphed into DojoMór. DojoMór is primarily funded by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) of Ireland under the Information Technology Investment Fund [3]. It is primarily aimed at children who are inexperienced in coding, with this being their first introduction to coding. It is a fun filled day where the children learn to code games. There are many different workshops during the day where the children can experience different forms of programming. There are variations in the workshops from each third level institution, but they would all provide workshops in the free programming language Scratch, which was developed in MIT and is an online block-based visual programming language. Other workshops included are Greenfoot, Python, Microbits, Web design, Drone coding, HTML, Swift coding, Mobile App development and coding with Minecraft. The workshops are one hour in length and are designed to be informal with guidance given on a one on one basis for any child who needs it from a mentor. Mentors are normally from both the CoderDojo community and third level computing students. Generally, the children can complete the workshop in approximately 35 minutes. This gives them 25 minutes to come up with their own ideas and designs for a new code. This underpins the knowledge gained from the first 35 minutes and the children leave the workshop confident in their ability to code in that specific language. This paper will explain how the DojoMór program was developed and will comprehensively go over the construction of the workshops.

Keywords: Coding, Children’s Education, STEM, Outreach, Primary, Post Primary.

References:
[1] https://coderdojo.com/movement/
[2] https://www.coderdojobelgium.be/en/nieuws/speciale-dojos
[3] https://hea.ie/skills-engagement/ict-skills/
[4] https://scratch.mit.edu/