ITT Computing Camps
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What a year it has been. First I get the amazing opportunity to work in ITT, but then as I embarked on delivering computer camps around Ireland, well it is a blur from there! The camps started with me calling schools, offering our services! I was lucky as my previous career was a secondary school teacher, so I knew roughly how to start. This was actually part of my role in ITT, to visit schools and promote computer science, while also exposing students to what it really is, using code and computational thinking but to name a few.
What really took me back was the uptake. This was simply unbelievable. As word started to spread so did the number of enquiries for the camps. I am still so humbled that it was so successful. We traveled all around Ireland too, not just Dublin. This was important to ITT, as even though the students may not attend our college, we may still be able to positively influence them and their perceptions of computer science!
Since September we have been honoured to visit 95 schools! We had the pleasure to deliver the camps to 2943 students. I still have to double check this number. Anecdotally the feedback was phenomenal. We have visited schools in Dublin all the way to Mayo. Adding to the success was the sponsorship we received from Microsoft Ireland. It has been such a phenomenal journey.
What excites me the most is what we will hopefully be able to achieve next year. We plan to run the camps again and hopefully improve our reach, but also combine this with research. With computer science being offered to phase one schools in September 2018, its vital to continue camps to inspire and educate, but also measure perceptions so that we can continually improve our methodology!
