User:James Crook

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Who I am
I'm one of the mentors, a programmer based in Dublin. My day job is for Microsemi where I write software for electronics engineers creating new circuits. My first full time job in Ireland was in validation testing a scientific satellite. I also write free open source software as I am one of the lead developers of the open source sound editor 'Audacity'.

Contact

 * e-mail: james.k.crook@gmail.com
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Involvement in CoderDojo
I've mentored at the Dublin Science Gallery, DCU and UCD coder dojos, mentoring html/css/javascript. I've organised a couple of workshops for CoderDojo, and was on the DojoCon2014 at Slane main committee.

I'm here on this wiki to promote sharing of resources and experiences, so that as teachers and mentors we learn from each other and achieve more than we could if the dojos were all separate initiatives.

Hopes for Coder Dojo
I am particularly interested in changing the dynamic in the dojos, so that kids become active learners, teaching themselves how to teach each other, how to program and calling on the mentors as a resource. "I want to program Angry Birds", "OK, then you need to learn how to use an image editor, and how to calculate how objects move. Here are places to look on the internet and things to try to learn about that.."

Diverse Levels
Even in the Dublin CoderDojo where we have a group for Python (experienced coders), a groups for beginner HTML and for intermediate HTML the age range and range of experience in the classrooms is wide. Kids may not be coming to every single dojo, so may have missed vital material to do the 'current exercise'. We're getting away with it because we have many mentors who can go round and help the kids whatever level they are at. We show the kids how to teach themselves from internet resources, introducing w3schools early on. Going round the class with the kids choosing a new tag to learn worked well. In the advanced classes we're moving to project work.

Basics
The very basics, setting up an editor, connecting to wireless etc can take up a lot of time. There is also a next level of basics in using an editor, that is part of the learning but less visible. For example learning to use shortcut keys Ctrl-S (or clicking on save icon) to save before viewing. Not just cut and paste, but cut and paste over something, to replace it. Using the cursor keys to move around rather than deleting text and re typing it in again.

Away-From-Keyboard
UCD have one away-from-keyboard activity, which is to look inside an old PC and identify the power supply, disk drives, memory cards, graphics cards, fans, with a mentor (or two!) there to explain. This worked really well and made a good break from working at the screen/keyboard.

Courses
Sortable table of Tutorials - Moved to new page