We finished season 2 recently, meaning the grade 10 students had to leave, replaced by a new set of grade 9 students. This transition proved to be more difficult than I anticipated because of a lot of the new members where beginners in programming and projects at their level were limited. However, I persevered through the challenging process and was able to help out every student find a project that they could work on to support our community. Through this process, I developed better delegation skills.
Soon, we had our Coding For Good – Blue Dragons Hackathon which we had been planning for months. Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation is a non-profit organisation based in Vietnam whose aim is to help street kids and children who have been affected by slavery and human trafficking. The aim of the hackathon was to generate ideas/features for an already existing Blue Dragons app. For the past few months, I had been working closely with the hackathon to advertise it to students through our website. The design process required extensive planning and communication. I was working collaboratively on the website with a friend and we would discuss details, suggested edits etc to the website. This allowed us to build upon each others’ ideas and in the end, we created something better than what we would have in done by ourselves. On the day of the hackathon, I wasn’t allowed to participate as it was a conflict of interest; however, I was able to be a mentor to the groups participating and would frequently help them out during their planning phase.
Learning Outcomes Demonstrated:
- Learning outcome 2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process
- Learning outcome 3: Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience
- Learning outcome 4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences
- Learning outcome 5: Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively
- Learning outcome 6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance
