Teaching linux and programming to kids for google code in



 Around 6 months ago  i took a job as a teacher. From engineer in industrial zones to teacher. The cool part is that teachers get vacations. That was  the first time since i started working that i was gonna be relatively free for two whole months.  If you have worked in only hectic environments before , vacations are a  bore!
So my friend Logan from hackers.mu asked me to tutor kids for google code in . It' a prestigious coding event organized by google every year. Many students from  top schools all around the world  including US, Europe & Asia participate.It's about introducing young developers to the world of Linux and open source development.  Frankly its sad that Mauritius (nor anyone from Africa) never participated before.
We asked around who wanted to participate and the college du saint esprit answered the call. The CSE spirit of old is still there.  A decade back i used to be part of the computer club there and the enthusiasm about anything IT related hasn't died down. They even have a robotics club. My high school teacher Mr Gunnoo is still in charge.
I started teaching the kids about Linux severals weeks before the competition started. They caught on really fast. Some even learnt about virtual box and came on the first day with Linux already running in virtual box. We only mentioned it to them and they did the effort of learning everything online. In one session nearly everyone had ubuntu installed in virtual box. They joined  an irc group and helped each other. Great collaboration work.
It was more about guiding them than teaching to be frank. You just have to tell them what to do and they go for it. Sure, sometimes some hard concepts needed to be explained but never in details. These kids burnt the midnight oil till 03 00 at times.  They ask questions and help each other out.
Then came html , php and some light MySql. They learnt these topics as if they were in the hunger games and their lives depended on it.
The really impressive part was that a few of them are young. By young i mean 13 years old. At that age all i cared about was Dragon Ball z and half-life. These kids are sacrificing their vacations and play time for the sake for learning IT. That's just incredible.
They decided to do the Drupal tasks. They did have issues understanding at first what Drupal was but got back on track fast. Their first assignments got rejected a few times. They encouraged each other in the chat room and went back at it till their tasks got accepted. The College du Saint esprit is the first college from the african region to ever participate in this event. Kifah  (kiffa meeran) and Heervesh Lallbahadur are currently in the leaders for the drupal task.


 The others ( Nigel yong, Jeremie Daniel, Vadish dussoye.)are just behind bogged down by lack of time due to tuitions. Else they would all be in the lead.
The youngest one is named Neel and frankly that kid is way smarter in IT than my team was when we were in form 1 ( the exception being Logan maybe).

They are still doing that. Its 10 51 pm and there is a lot of messages to read in the chat room. That's 3-4 days before Christmas when all kids are screaming about their gifts. Our little Mauritian IT geniuses are still at work and that's a lesson of dedication and hard work for all of us.

Our current syllabus for IT in Mauritius leaves too many geniuses behind. Real IT techs don't just like to read about tech, they like to use it. they like to write code, to install Linux distros one after the other , to try to hack their way out of problem and to create new things. That's one thing sorely missing in Mauritius. If we empowered our kids early on, Mauritius could be a creator of technology instead of being just a user.
It would be great if this competition was open to all students of Mauritius. I'm sure giving the proper backing Hackers.mu could even find more teachers or IT techs willing to teach.
Frankly why stop there. Why wait for Google? We could teach students who are willing so much more. I think a lot of kids would love to  learn programming , web design and networking at a young age. They have the will , we are just not giving them the way.

Here are the  names of our geniuses :
Heervesh Lallbahadur , Nigel yong, neel gopaul, ismaeel Mohammed, Jeremie Daniel, Vadish dussoye, kiffa meeran (AKA Kifah mask)

Addendum
Nigel joined the lead





Comments

  1. great job :) kEEP it up. The spirit of hackers.mu is in you all!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for mentionning us Deelvesh
    Its all because of you guys (you and loganaden)

    ReplyDelete

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