How A Regular Session Looks After The CoderDojo Timișoara 5th Anniversary

It was Friday, January 19th, when CoderDojo, the global movement of free, volunteer-led, community-based programming clubs for young people celebrated its 5th anniversary in Timișoara. The actual festive event took place Saturday, January 20th, the usual day for the regular dojo activities. Instead of coding, a relaxed AM hours party at Club Blackbox was that day on agenda, with diplomas, live music, special guests like Pete Lomas, co-creator of Raspberry Pi, and ninjas, mentors and champions from lots of dojos (from Brăila, Alba-Iulia, Oradea, Reșita, Timișoara Metropolitan Area). Naturally it all ended with lots of kids and mentors playing bawling, pool, arcade games.

The 6th year of CoderDojo-style programming education in Timișoara practically started yesterday, again in Timișoara Startup Hub, the originar location of the movement. Nothing really special excepting the usual enthusiasm and good, hard-working mood of the ninjas and the solid presence of the mentors.

Nothing special means no perturbation, so it was the ideal moment to produce some statistics on who are our CoderDojo Timișoara @Startup Hub beneficiaries.

So, figures, ladies and gentlemen!

• there were a total of 62 ninjas participating
• 52 boys and 10 girls were tweaking code today
• a nice 12.5 average age
• a relatively flat distribution according to age/school grade

• a surprising number of 7 kids coming from outside Timișoara, from villages like Dumbrăvița, Becicherecu-Mic, towns like Sânnicolau-Mare or Lugoj, or from the city of Arad
• an impressive number of 26 schools represented, with a number of ninjas per school ranging from as low as 1 to as much as 7

• there is a solid group of younger ninjas learning Scratch with a diverse further distribution of the interest in other technologies

Who is mentoring?

Coming to the mentors’ side, its worth mentioning that despite the fact that some of the mentors like the Scratch guru Ilie Ciotir were missing as taking advantage of the appealing snow on the ski slopes, we recorded an overall good presence, with about 10 mentors.

The Scratch cohort was directed by ninjas’ father-mentors Nicolae Padurariu and Madincea Vasile. We also had visiting and contributing Razvan AVRAM, a web specialist and business angel backed entrepreneur currently based in Cluj that used to mentor years ago. Robotics passionate ninjas got good support from Gabriel Borugă, a technology teacher at @Colegiul Tehnic ”Henri Coandă”. Bogdan Cublesan, discretely celebrated his birthday mentoring yesterday, too! Additionally to Bogdan, several other university students like Anita Morarescu, Adrian Garovat, Rares Istoc, switched from the exam session prep mode to the mentoring mode!

Thank you all, mentors!

Other things worth noting

• a nice moment when two girls, Camelia (13) and Timeea (12) came with a decided voice stating “We are new and we want to build robots!” and ending the session as a team together with Andrei (12), a more experienced ninja, planning to order online components for building a robotic arm starting next week.

• a long awaited post-dojo workshop for the assembly of the AstroPi kits received from ESA by ESERO Romania and their encasing in the Symme3D printed boxes, performed by mentors from CoderDojo Timisoara @Startup Hub and CoderDojo Timisoara @Bartok together with Virgiliu Pop, ESERO Romania manager. The gear will get tested and sent to kids allover Romania to train for the AstroPi competitions.

• on a personal note, I am glad to see Daniel Timoce, a kid 7th grade from my secondary school, Școala Generală nr. 2 din Sânnicolau-Mare, joining our dojo! Until we’ll inaugurate one in the Westernmost Romanian town, Daniel is doing great, learning from @Adrian Garovat, one of the best CoderDojo ex-ninjas in Timisoara, a winner of CoderDojo Coolest Projects Showcase in 2016 and twice runner-up awardee, in the same competition, in 2014 and 2017.

We’ll try to get back periodically to you, with news and interesting stories about CoderDojo Timisoara @Startup Hub!

Until than, BE COOL! And yes, you can give some clapping to this post :)

If you are interested in details about how you can join, as a ninja or a mentor, CoderDojo Timișoara @Startup Hub or any other of the almost 40 dojos in Romania, drop me a line at radu.ticiu@gmail.com.

Find out more about how you can start a dojo.