Are you interested in making the most of your child's summer holidays?
Have you heard about the Coding Camp for kids coming to Dungarvan at the end of July?
Every morning from 10AM to 1PM between Monday July 21st to Friday July 25th, the Dungarvan Enterprise Centre, in association with the Local Enterprise Office, will be hosting a camp where children aged between 8 and 14 can come to learn and develop their computer skills.
The camp will be run in association with Darock Media - a local company that specialises in web design and app development.
The aim of the camp is to teach children skills such as coding websites and building apps as well as developing efficiency in writing HTML,
creating themes and publishing fully functional websites, all in a fun and simple manner.
This camp has the ability to greatly impact and benefit your child's future as Ireland's economy becomes ever more reliant on the digital sector. Experts predict our country's digital economy is set to surge to almost €22 billion alone by 2020 - a figure that will demand 150,000 news jobs in the digital market as a result. Add to this the current 20,000 shortfall of software engineers in this country and the advantages for learning computer coding at a young age is obvious.
But besides the bonuses of your child getting a head start in a skill that looks set to dominate the future economic market, learning code will enable your child to perform complex tasks on a computer - an art form that will allow them to build adventurous virtual worlds with no limits to their imaginations.
Cork teen Harry Moran is such an example of this. In 2011, the then 12 year old Moran, who learned to write code at a CoderDojo computer camp ran at his local primary school in Glasheen, created an app game called PizzaBot.
The game topped the Apple charts that year and beat off stiff competition from internationally recognised popular games such as AngryBirds and the Call of Duty app. The app made Moran Apple's youngest ever Mac app developer and he followed up on his orginal success with another game called RobotRun.
Waterford entrepreneur Jordan Casey is another fine
example of the benefits of learning digital language from a young age. The 14
year old Waterford entrepreneur is the CEO of his own company, Casey Games – an
award winning independent video game company.
The
teenage tech prodigy’s company has had huge success developing apps for mobiles
and the web such as Greenboy Touch, Alien Ball versus Humans, and Food World.
In the YouTube clip below watch Casey discuss one of his latest apps, TeacherWare, at the 2013 Dublin Web Summit. The app is designed to help teachers stay organised.
Two more recent success stories from Coding Camps in Ireland are 13 and 14 year old Cian Martin Bohan and Cormac Kinsella who this week launched their app Open Share. Open Share allows users to share a post across several social media networks simultaneously.
The
week long camp will be delivered by a teacher and an industry professional who
also volunteers at the Enterprise Centre’s Coder Dojo.
The camp is suitable and will be beneficial
for children with an interest in computers, gaming and coding or children who
have a keen interest to develop skills in these areas.
With the recent news that Education Minister Ruairi Quinn is looking to introduce computer coding as a subject at both primary and secondary schools - in some cases as early as this September, participation in this camp can offer a huge advantage and insight for your child.
If that is not enough reason for your child to participate in this wonderful and exciting full filled week then check out this short YoutTube clip entitled, Why Our Kids Must Learn to Code, where inspirational figures in the technology industry such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg and Microsoft creator Bill Gates talk about the importance and value of children learning to code.
The cost of the week long camp is €99 per child.
