EARLIER THIS week, a young IT entrepreneur from Cork appeared in front of an Oireachtas committee to share his ideas on teaching IT in the classroom, another notch on the short but spectacular career ladder of 19-year-old James Whelton, who only completed his Leaving Cert in June.
Between his mocks and his finals, he set up his first company, Disruptive Development, and by the end of the summer he had a second, Coder Dojo, started with investor and Xing co-founder Bill Liao. In September he won Best Rookie at the Irish Internet Association’s Net Visionary Awards.
The committee wanted to pick his brains about Coder Dojo’s not-for-profit workshops that introduce children and teenagers to computer programming. The courses have flourished in Ireland and have attracted overseas interest – so much so that he’s just back from running his first UK sessions. He now has around 50 mentors who work with up to 30 students at a time, typically in three-hour sessions.
Having been programming and writing websites since he was nine, Whelton’s own frustrations gave him the idea for Coder Dojo.
“Anytime I encountered an issue that I didn’t know how to fix I’d spend hours on something that could have been resolved in 10 seconds if I’d had someone to ask,” he said. “Going through the school system, I found people with similar issues or people who were interested in code and programming but didn’t have the resources to nurture their talent.”
The Oireachtas committee would have heard how Coder Dojo eschews traditional teaching techniques for more informal information sharing. There are no rows of desks or teacher at the head of the class.
“We stayed away from the education system and tried to develop something a bit different with our own teaching style,” said Whelton.
He’s not blaming schools, just highlighting a shortfall. Technology and business courses touch on technology, but with nothing like the detail that nascent talents like Whelton need. They do their best but they don’t have the knowledge that’s required.
“If a career guidance teacher can’t tell the difference between being a web developer and writing iPhone applications, they need to be able to point pupils in the direction of someone who can,” he said.
Whelton would like to see a Leaving Cert programming course developed with a strong project focus. He believes it would give students the kind of practical experience that could alleviate the skills shortfall many Irish IT companies are suffering – including his own.
Having just raised seed capital for Disruptive Development, which has developed a product for monitoring social network behaviour, he’s looking to recruit two developers in January.
