Contributing to their host community by helping discover
the next Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerbarg, Seun Osewa, etc, the
ICT/Educational CDS group hosted a record first Hour of Code to held in
Taraba State.
The ICT/Educational CDS group on Wednesday December 9th engaged several secondary school students at Yagai Academy, Jalingo for the global ICT elementary programming event Hour of Code in commemoration of the World Computer Science Week, 2015.
Hour of Code, introduced by Hadi Partovi in 2003 is aimed at bridging
the huge gap between the consumers and developers of technologies
through helping participants – majorly youngsters – to gain first time
programming experience by solving some problems with aid of the right
programming instructions.
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Blockly Games – one of the programming challenges |
Students from 14 secondary schools in Jalingo were present at the
event – the first of its kind in Taraba State – held at Yagai Academy.
Amongst the schools were Laazeere Academy, Overcomers’ Academy and a
host of others.
Speaking at the event was Mr. Nwankwo Caleb, CEO of Nocal Digital
Solution Ltd helping to encourage and guide the students to pursue a
successful career in ICT making references to the field’s world power
forces both internationally and locally.
Caleb who also talked about how much of passion, persistence and hard
work the students should apply to become the next big thing in computer
science, in his words explained how he ended up in the field despite
being “a Chemical Engineer by certificate” but his passion and hard
work turned him into an “IT engineer and consultant professionally.”
When asked about his view on computer programming in Taraba State by Tcblodge
correspondents, he said, “I can’t say much with regards to Jalingo
because it’s still very much backward compared to other states in the
country.
“The low rate of development here (Taraba) is also not helping,” he added.
“A lot of time has been wasted; quite alright, but now we can still
do a lot to bring this issue of programming and computer science into
Taraba,” he concluded.
A student from the host school, Nasiru Bala whose future ambition is
to become a Biochemist spoke on how his newly acquired knowledge can
help him in that path. “It can assist by creating programmes that would
enlighten others to learn more about Biochemistry,” he enthused.
Furthermore, the president of the ICT/Educational CDS Tosin Amuda who
categorically stated that “everything – including law suits, medical
diagnosis and treatment, and so on – would be done through the use of
new computer system programs in the near future”, gave a summary of the
great feat they were able to achieve at the debut HOC in the state.


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“We taught kids to get things done on the computer, being able to
write programs by moving some things from one point to the other using
some set of instructions.”
“We taught kids to get things done on the computer, being able to
write programs by moving some things from one point to the other using
some set of instructions.”
Conclusively, Tosin called out to the state’s government and
enthusiasts to help develop the state’s ICT level by providing more
computer facilities to students.
Expect the broadcast package of Hour of Code on Kopas’ Time in our Radio Category.
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