On 17 May 2018, we had our first Closing Ceremony of the very first workshop to give kids an opportunity to showcase their learning to others, spread awareness about coding and start building a community to support coding for all kids. I am writing this mail to share the joy and happiness from the ceremony and I am sure that you will enjoy reading it.
This summer, with the thought of reaching out to more kids to give them an opportunity to get introduced to coding, I decided to start up a center where any kid from any background can come and learn to code. I randomly reached out to few school to share space and, luckily, Edunova Higher Secondary School in Maninagar, Ahmedabad opened the space for us to start up weekend coding workshop.
On 6 May 2018, I started the first batch with just 3 kids. The 5 weekend summer workshop focused on introducing coding to kids with Scratch and help them learn concept of sequence and skill of abstraction by making an interactive application to make a Penguin move and talk, to create a fortune teller to understand abstraction and create a rhyme player in their voice. Also, we had volunteers come in helping kids in their project and share their experience about computer science. The priority was to create a space were kids get exposure to coding through different ways and are able to enjoy the process of creation by working with peers, volunteers and facilitator.
In the ceremony, kids presented their Rhyme Player having their favorite rhyme recorded in their voice. They were felicitated for all the hard work and received certificates from Mr. Porko Mudaliar, Director, Edunova Science Higher Secondary School. Also, we had Ms. Divya Mehta and Ms. Shreya Chaudhury who work in Knovos and Oracle respectively to share their journey with Computer Science. Both of them gave an insightful talk in their style helping audience to understand the benefit of computer science and coding personally and for the society as well. I for the first time realized that having IRCTC is such a blessing of computer science as I can remember that how long I had to wait in queue to book the train tickets when I was young. The ceremony ended with a Q and A session and feedback where the audience asked question about what could be done to motivate kids to learn coding and what are the resources available to help kids learn to code.
After organizing this workshop, where the place got gifted to us, parents and teachers promoted about the program, volunteers came on Sundays to support kids to learn, guest speakers enthusiastically accepted the invite to talk with kids, I strongly realized that there are so many people to help and support who strongly believe in making excellent education accessible to kids.
So, on one hand when I see the ambitious vision that every kid codes to express and problem which seems quite daunting but then on other hand there so many people extending unwavering support and working in tandem to make the vision come alive.
This blog is gratitude to all such people who directly or indirectly give their best to help kids learnt to code, a much needed skill in current digital era!
25 June 2018 Irfan Lalani
