Students from Colihaut had no regrets giving up two (2) weeks of their vacation to learn how to code. Thanks to the collaboration by INSPIRE Inc, the Universal Service Fund, StartUP 767 Inc. and the Ministry of Education, twenty (20) students can now use the MIT tool, App Inventor® to create basic mobile applications.
The students between the ages of 9 – 16, participated in a two (2) week introduction to Mobile Application Development Course at the Colihaut Primary School. Students were taught the principles of computer science while developing basic mobile applications for android operating systems.
Executive Director of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, (NTRC) Mr. Craig Nesty, was pleased with the student‘s level of engagement and the enthusiasm displayed. At the certificate presentation ceremony, he told the children “while you’re not an expert yet, having just trained for only 50 hours, just imagine what you can build if you put in the time.” As an encouragement to the students and teachers who attended the training session, Mr. Nesty challenged the team to continue the learning process and submit an app to StartUp 767 Inc. by December 10th, 2019, where the best app will be awarded a prize.
One of the students Shirquanne Simon had this to say, “When I was told about the camp I expected to come there and learn word processing and so forth, now I can code.”
Ms. Ezra Blondell, representative of INSPIRE Inc., was ecstatic about the enthusiasm showed by the students and what they were able to achieve within the two (2) week period. She is even more motivated to extend this initiative to the wider community.
“Few of the students had any knowledge of coding fundamentals or app development”’ said Ms Raymond, tutor at the Code Camp, “but after only a couple days of instructions, their ability to build a simple application on their own was impressive, the participants themselves were constantly surprised and excited at the things they were able to create and they were always eager to learn more.”
The participants were not the only winners. The NTRC presented the Principal of the Colihaut Primary School, with ten (10) Acer All-in-One computers for use by the students and for the establishment of a Community Access Point. It is the fervent hope of the NTRC that the community will utilize the tools available to develop teams of programmers that solve issues in the community and further afield.
