Chronixx Upbeat About His Upcoming Coding Camp For High School Students
Reggae/Dancehall superstar Chronixx says the upcoming free Algorithm Coding Camp which is to be held at the University of the West Indies this summer, under the JamCoders programme which he conceptualised, is just the beginning of good things to come.
In a recent interview, the Chronology artist gave an update on the programming residential camp, which targets Jamaican high schools and for which he has been the main donor.
“The JamCoders computer science summer camp at The University of the West Indies, Mona, from July 4 to 29 will welcome 50 students from all over the island to learn coding and artificial intelligence from lecturers coming from Harvard and UC Berkeley,” Chronixx had explained.
“Teaching assistants from countries all over the world that are just trying to do positive work for the summer. The deadline to sign up ended on May 22 but it is going to be an annual thing and we are at the beginning of a lot of things,” he had told The Gleaner newspaper.
According to the administrators of the programme, the Jamcoders syllabus will be heavily influenced by AddisCoder, which is a free intensive four-week summer camp focused on programming and algorithms in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The programme, as is described on the Jamcoders official website, was made possible through the efforts of Chronixx’s charity organisation, the Caring Hands of Rastafari Foundation, which had “made a generous donation to make the summer camp a reality in Jamaica”. Other donors include the Survival and Flourishing Fund, and the D.E. Shaw Group.
The organisers also noted that the Spanish Town Rockin’ singer had conceptualised the idea of having the camp after learning about the AddisCoder programme in Ethiopia.
“The idea to start JamCoders was initially conceived by Jamaica McNaughton (Chronixx) and the Chronixx team after reading about the AddisCoder program in Ethiopia, and he then made a generous founding donation to support creation of the program. We thank Chronixx for his vision and generosity,” it notes.
The Jamcoders programme is open to ninth to 11th graders but no programming experience is necessary. The fully-funded programme provides free dormitory rooms and meals for all student participants, but targets students who have excelled academically in their schools, particularly in Mathematics and related subjects.
The Summer Camp is being coordinated by senior lecturer in Computer Science in the Department of Computing in the Faculty of Science and Technology at the UWI Mona, Dr Daniel Fokum, and Professor Jelani Nelson, from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of AddisCoder, Inc.
According to Dr. Fokum, the JamCoders summer camp is aimed at enabling students who have never programmed before to learn how to.
In explaining how the activities of the camp will unfold, he said it will be fully residential and that 50 students from across Jamaica will be accommodated on The UWI Mona Campus.
The lecturers he said, will consist of two hours-long sessions in the morning and for three hours in the afternoon, the students will be working on programming tasks.
Chronixx’s summer camp will commence approximately eight months after Prime Minister Andrew Holness officially launched the National Coding in Schools Programme, targeting approximately 400,000 students from grades one to 13, and 15,000 teachers in public schools across Jamaica.
At the time, the Prime Minister had said that while not all students who are taught coding will become a coder or have a career in information technology, being introduced to coding will help children to problem-solve and to think rationally.
“These abilities, when developed at an early stage, will enable students to be more productive in the workforce and in their future careers,” Holness had said, noting that in an increasingly digital world where “we are surrounded by devices controlled by computers,” it is important that Jamaicans are prepared to take advantage of the huge opportunities expected to be created.