The Central Information Technology Office in Belmopan wants to create the next generation of brilliant programmers. Well, that is the hope but first they have to spark the interest in kids. They plan to do that through their Creative programming summer camp. It began on Monday and Courtney Weatherburne stopped in today to see how these young kids were handling code. Here’s her story.
To the common eye, this is just a random jumble of symbols, numbers, letters on a screen. But to programmers, it’s code – a list of program instructions.
The programmers at the Central Information Technology Office in Belmopan are getting this group of kids familiar with the basics of programming through their annual summer camp.
Delsie Ku - Policy Training Coordinator
"The purpose of the program was to try to hone these STEM skills into children. Nowadays, it is all about technology. You look around everything has to do with programming right, anything that has to do with instructions. So we want children from a young age to get that idea that there is a possibility that you might like coding, programing right?"
And in order to get the kids interested, facilitator Michael Gomez had to use a kid-friendly program called ‘Scratch’ where the kids can have fun while learning the concept of coding. So instead of the text, Scratch uses a colorful block-like interface. The kids can create all kinds of creative online projects.
Michael Gomez - Facilitator
"When we go on scratch if they want to add a sprite, code to it."
Today is day 3 and most of the kids have gotten the hang of it.
Michael Gomez
"I would say the majority of them are catching on and then the minority are the ones who are falling behind and are catching on. So what I wanted to do is make the ones that are catching it well and help the ones who are falling behind."
The kids have completed a number of activities including puzzles and of course they were allowed to play games for the fun of it and also for them to understand how code works in developing a game.
It is quite a bit of material but it’s worth it. The exposure to coding will challenge these kids to be problem solvers.
Delsie Ku
"We want to have them thinking critically, analyze. When it comes to code it is about instructions right and you need to have an idea of what you want to do and develop the instructions to tell the machine to do what you want it to, that is the concept but during that you are going to encounter issues, you are going to encounter problems and the child needs to be able to identify what that problem is and how they are going to fix it."
This is the 4th year that CITO is hosting this summer camp. About 400 kids have participated in this summer camp since it began in 2015. The first couple weeks are for kids ages 7 to 9 while the last two weeks are for kids ages 10 -13. The camp ends on August 3th.
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