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Dojos of code to expand in Karratha

Alicia PereraPilbara News
Sebastian Bulinski, 8, Bailey Smith, 8, and MacKenzie Smith, 9, are keen to become CoderDojo ninjas.
Camera IconSebastian Bulinski, 8, Bailey Smith, 8, and MacKenzie Smith, 9, are keen to become CoderDojo ninjas. Credit: Pilbara News, Alicia Perera

Leaders of a children’s coding program are looking to expand its Karratha network by drawing on skills and enthusiasm for STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) that already exist in the community.

About 30 children, parents and educators flocked to the Karratha library last Thursday night to hear from some leading CoderDojo “champions”, or mentors, speak about how they could help grow the popular coding clubs into a wider Pilbara community network. The CoderDojo program, which provides resources for extra-curricular clubs for seven to 17-year-olds to learn coding through creative digital projects, was rolled out in Karratha mid last year

Several local dojos have already sprung up in that time, including at Karratha Senior High School, St Luke’s College and Dampier Primary School.

Fogarty Foundation CoderDojo WA co-ordinator Rebecca Loftus said the wider Karratha community had a lot of potential to expand as a dojo network.

“I think there’s so much going here in the resources industry,” she said.

“There’s a lot of people that have backgrounds in the STEM space ... so it’s really just tapping into that, drawing people together in a common cause.”

Ms Loftus said CoderDojo had taken off in WA, which as a regional network had more dojos than any other in the world.

CoderDojo champion and presenter Josh Goyder said people did not need to be coding experts to become mentors, only enthusiasm and some spare time.

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