The College of Education’s new LearnerSpace, housed in the North Building of the Stafford Campus, provided the site for a meeting of the Fredericksburg CoderDojo group this past Saturday. CoderDojo is a program that matches programming and IT professionals with young people to mentor them in technology-related areas. Dojos are organized and run by volunteers. The LearnerSpace, UMW’s second makerspace, was developed by the College of Education as a site for educators and the community to learn about and work with emerging technology.
More than 20 young programmers and parents learned the basics of programming in HTML and Java from consultants from Red Hat, a consulting firm in Richmond. Among the Red Hat instructors was Elliot Sperlazza, UMW BS 2008, UMW MS in Elementary Education, 2009. The attendees also had the opportunity to work with some of the LearnerSpace’s technology, including 3D printing, Cubelets modular robotics, and LittleBits circuitry.
The next meeting of the CoderDojo will be July 7, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the LearnerSpace. If you would like to know more about CoderDojo or the LearnerSpace contact Professor George Meadows, COE, at gmeadows@umw.edu
