BellTime Magazine Spring/ Summer 2016 May 2016 | Page 32

Irish Códaithe Irish Códaithe

The Irish Códaithe Competition is a competition set up by three 2nd year students from Killorglin Community College , County Kerry , Timothy McGrath , Sarah O ’ Shea & Rebecca Coffey . This is a Student Enterprise Awards Business project .

We set up & ran a coding / technology event in our school on Saturday 27th February . On the day , there were two competitions going on ; the first was a CoderDojo Competition for Kerry CoderDojos . The second competition was an Open Competition for any group or individual from the county that had a technology-based project . These competitions created a platform for young people to showcase what they do and the projects they made . Each project from both competitions was judged and there were amazing prizes awarded .
We had Bank of Ireland as our main sponsor for the event . The CoderDojo Foundation as another sponsor , Splash Graphic Designs , Tweak . com , The Brand Geeks , Slogadh Signs , ITEireann and FEXCO . We are actually setting up a website at the moment and we also have thriving active Twitter , Facebook , Instagram and Periscope accounts . Please follow and like us on these . We are also in constant contact with Mary Dunphy Moloney ( CEO of CoderDojo Foundation Worldwide ), Peter O ’ Shea ( Communications and Events at CoderDojo Foundation Worldwide ), Ross O Neill
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( CoderDojo Foundation Worldwide liaison lead ) and Seán Kelly ( MEP ).
The Event took place in Killorglin Community College on Saturday 27th February at 12:00 p . m . to 15:00 p . m . It was a huge success .
Projects that entered the competition varied from a website to an app to a Scratch game etc . All ages could enter the Irish Códaithe Competition . On the day , we had 2 Raspberry Pi ( which is a creditcard sized computer that plugs into a computer monitor or TV and uses a standard keyboard and mouse .) for the public to test and try out , Drone flying , a Virtual Reality headset , Intel Galileo ( similar to a Raspberry Pi ) and much much more .
This was a huge event , as we wanted to show that we have a strong and thriving technology based community which we hope , in the future will encourage young people
to use technology to their advantage in their lives and careers . Seán Kelly ( Member of the European Parliament ) is very much behind our project as he is all for supporting & encouraging The Youth of Ireland to get Coding .
We represented our School at The Kerry Student Enterprise Awards with our project The Irish Códaithe Competition on March 4th in the IT Tralee . We won the overall Intermediate Category Award . This means that we also attended The All Ireland Finals of The Student Enterprise Awards in Croke Park on April 20th .
We were invited by Bank of Ireland , Killorglin to have a stand at The Killorglin Bank of Ireland Enterprise Town Event on March 11th . At this we showcased our project The Irish Códaithe Comp . Business and we were asked to give a talk on Coding & Our Project , which we did . This was another