Chronixx’s Jamcoders 2023 Summer Camp Now In Final Week

A total of 50 students, 21 boys and 29 girls representing all 14 parishes in Jamaica, are participating in the second staging of Chronixx’s Jamcoders Coding Camp—a free four-week computer science summer camp for high students from across the island.

Like he did last year, the Reggae superstar visited the annual summer camp held at the University of the West Indies a few days ago, and shared photos of himself posing gleefully with campers and lecturers.

The camp on algorithms and programming is now in its fourth week, having commenced on July 2.  It will end this Friday, July 28.

The all-expenses-paid program provides free dormitory rooms and meals for all student participants and targets students who have excelled academically in their schools, particularly in Mathematics and related subjects.

The Jamcoders program is open to students from the third to the fifth form, and programming experience is necessary.  Its syllabus is being heavily influenced by AddisCoder, which is a free intensive four-week summer camp focused on programming and algorithms in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

This year’s program, in addition to the 50 participants, has 11 teaching assistants from seven countries, four lecturers and is with classes being held eight hours daily.  

“Lectures are coupled with daily laboratory sessions. These laboratory sessions provide hands-on experiences that enable students to apply their knowledge, develop technical skills, reinforce concepts, foster collaboration and build confidence… By combining theoretical lectures with practical exercises, the camp is providing a well-rounded and immersive learning experience for all students,” the camp organizers explained in a recent Instagram post.

“The laboratory sessions are facilitated by teaching assistants who are pursuing Masters and PhDs Computer Science related programmes at the University of the West Indies, Mona; University of California, Berkeley; University of Waterloo; University of Chicago and Nanyang Technological University,” it added.

Jamcoders has had several face-to-face public lectures over the last three weeks, among them one by JamCoder Summer Camp 2023 lecturer and co-founder of JamCoders, Jamaica, Dr. Jelani Nelson, who spoke on the topic, “Smartphone Privacy via Projective Geometry”.

Dr. Nelson, who is an Ethiopian-American Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, was the 2014 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and is also the creator of AddisCoder, a computer science summer programme for Ethiopian high school students in Addis Ababa.

In May last year, Jamcoders had broken the news that Chronixx had partnered with Founder of AddisCoders/JamCoders, Dr. Jelani Nelson to bring the ed tech programme to Jamaica, to expose high school students “from all over the island to learn coding and artificial intelligence from lecturers coming from Harvard and UC Berkeley”.

Jamcoders officials had said that the camp was made possible through the efforts of Chronixx’s  Caring Hands of Rastafari Foundation, which had “made a generous donation to make the summer camp a reality in Jamaica” as well as other donors such as the Survival and Flourishing Fund, and the D.E. Shaw Group.

The organisers also pointed out that Chronixx had conceptualised the idea of having the camp after learning about the AddisCoder programme in Ethiopia.

At the virtual launch of the camp last year, Chronix had said that it was an official start to something he was hoping would have a “long-term and positive effect upon our youths as far as developing them for a significant role in global development and preparing them for the inevitable transformation of the landscape here in the Caribbean”.

“Hopefully we can have this every single year… and a more inclusive programme for the Caribbean at large and for other students within the West Indies.  I am definitely overjoyed and a sense of hope and also a sense of direction for where this will take us and a revolution in technologies that can push our people forward; that is created by our people.  So this is the beginning.  So give thanks for the genesis heart of love,” Chronixx had said at the time.