Mpumalanga ICT CLUB
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
DigiGirlz exploring the Aerospace and Defence Careers
Monday, August 5, 2024
Mandela Day Celebrated in Nkangala District
Mpumalanga ICT Club celebrated Mandela Day on 18 July at Edward Matyeka Primary with eMalahleni 2 and 3 circuits, and 205 learners took part in the Code4Mandela Challenge. The teams of five used their 21st century skills such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and problem solving to reach the level 30 of the Rangers Coding App. The app has been developed by the Nelson Mandela University.
More than 100 children applauded their teams from the sidelines. Merlin Primary School won the honour of being number 1, followed by Johannes Kananda Primary School at number 2, Siphendulwe Primary School at number 3, and Edward Matyeka Primary School each earned medals and certificates.
“This was an exciting event, we included a Mandela song for children to dance following coding instructions to demystify coding” said Nomusa Keninda, founder of the club.
The Code4Mandela Challenge is a coding tournament that is initiated by Nelson Mandela University with Tangible Africa and Leva Foundation in Gqeberha. The Mpumalanga ICT Club is hosting the coding challenge for the third time since 2022. It happens annually on the 18 July during the Mandela Day.
“Every year, we observe the growth and the love of coding from the kids and we are looking forward to seeing more kids and supporting efforts from business, communities and government since the coding and robotics curriculum has been officially published for grade R-9”
This year, we also invited other Coding clubs in our district to join the Coding4mandela Challenge. These coding clubs have been established by the Mpumalanga ICT Club. They were produced by the Coding PLC. The love of coding is spreading in Mpumalanga.It was a wonderful afternoon that reminded us of our freedom fighters, particularly uTata Nelson Mandela. This younger generation listened intently as I told the narrative of Nelson Mandela, our first black president. #CodeForMandela #MandelaDay
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
10 years of the Mpumalanga ICT Club journey celebrated and honoured in a DigiGirlz Coding Bootcamp
Friday, December 1, 2023
A beacon of hope to many young girls
Nancy Shiba Primary School joined Microsoft Minecraft Hour of Code
Ms. Nomusa
Keninda, eLearning Specialist and Founder of the Mpumalanga ICT Club, and Ms
Samukelisiwe Hlomuka from J Kananda Primary School, an award winner for the ICT
in Education with Ms Beyanca Struwig of Microsoft South Africa, carefully
arranged the event. This event is part of the global celebration of the Hour of
Code, in which learners are exposed to computer science education through the
use of code.org resources to teach Coding and Robotics in schools.
“We were learning too, because AI is a new technology that is starting to affect all of us” according to Keninda. We discovered that AI still has many biases. In one of the exercises given, the AI robot did not recognize the diversity of learners who were receiving food from the AI robot, which was supposed to serve learners, because some learners were shorter and had darker complexion than what the AI was programmed to detect. During the exercises, students observed how to debug the AI software to accept diversity and inclusiveness.
When Ms
Hlomuka inquired if they were familiar with the coding game, one child replied,
“I know about Minecraft because I play it on my phone.” What was most
intriguing about Minecraft in this session was that the learners were given the
option to create their own game by coding it from start rather than consuming computer
games.
Following the Minecraft AI class, learners had fun creating their own game using the Scratch Coding environment. The pleasure of having a tablet on their desks was demonstrated by their brave listening during the coding sessions as they followed instructions led by Keninda and Hlomuka. Other classes were taught by Glenda Maselesele and Duduzile Mashinini who are Tangible Africa coding evangelists.
“Since I came from America on a leadership and Mentorship program, I can see there is a lot of demand for learners to learn computer science, I can relate from what I learnt from San Francisco.” Keninda stated.