CARIRI and bmo­bile are en­gag­ing with the na­tion’s youth to pro­mote ICT de­vel­op­ment and pro­fi­cien­cy. The fol­low­ing is après re­lease from bmo­bile.

The pri­ma­ry lan­guages that run the world are no longer Eng­lish, Span­ish or French. While these three have en­joyed promi­nence in diplo­ma­cy and com­merce for the past cen­tu­ry, the mod­ern world is run more on com­put­er code to­day, by the sheer scale of glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, than any oth­er lan­guage. Recog­nis­ing that learn­ing to code is a ne­ces­si­ty and pri­or­i­ty for young learn­ers, the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (CARIRI) with sup­port from com­pa­nies like bmo­bile have en­gaged with over 900 stu­dents in T&T to in­tro­duce them to the fun­da­men­tals of mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment and cod­ing lan­guages lat­er this month dur­ing school hol­i­days.

Since 2018, CARIRI has suc­cess­ful­ly ex­e­cut­ed ICT ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes in over 70 Sec­ondary Schools reach­ing over 1,500 stu­dents with great suc­cess. The Cod­ing and Mo­bile App De­vel­op­ment pro­gramme will be con­duct­ed us­ing Zoom and on­line video and al­low par­tic­i­pants, all aged be­tween 11 and 19, to learn the fun­da­men­tals of C#, Ja­va, HTML, SQL cod­ing lan­guages. Cod­ing is the com­put­er lan­guage used to de­vel­op apps, web­sites and soft­ware. Learn­ing cod­ing em­pow­ers peo­ple to do many things that they may not oth­er­wise be able to do, such as cre­at­ing web­sites, find­ing a ca­reer in app or game de­vel­op­ment, or even start­ing a tech­nol­o­gy-cen­tered busi­ness. It al­so al­lows the per­son to de­vel­op an­a­lyt­i­cal skills and crit­i­cal think­ing skills as well.

Ac­cord­ing to Ali­cia Williams, Mar­ket­ing Of­fi­cer II, CARIRI, it is vi­tal for our na­tion’s youth to un­der­stand mo­bile apps and how they are cre­at­ed, de­vel­oped and even com­mer­cialised. “The pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive of the pro­posed pro­gramme is to ex­pose par­tic­i­pants to cod­ing fun­da­men­tals and the process of mo­bile app cre­ation. Learn­ing con­sists of el­e­ments in C#, Ja­va, HTML, SQL and will cov­er a range of de­vel­op­ment from build­ing sim­ple apps to mi­ni games to keep it both fun and ed­u­ca­tion­al. The prac­ti­cal el­e­ments of Lev­el 1, which in­cludes Be­gin­ner and In­ter­me­di­ate Cours­es, are tar­get­ed to stu­dents in Forms 1 - 3. Lev­el 1 is taught on the MIT App In­ven­tor plat­form and is tar­get­ed to­wards the Low­er Sec­ondary School cur­ricu­lum,” she de­tailed. “Lev­el 2, the Ad­vanced Lev­el, is geared to­wards Up­per Sec­ondary School Stu­dents in Forms 4 and up and is de­signed to sup­ple­ment the ICT Cur­ricu­lum used in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.”

The pro­gramme has been com­pre­hen­sive­ly adapt­ed to fa­cil­i­tate re­mote learn­ing, with the class­room ses­sions avail­able as pre-record­ed seg­ments. The stu­dent can de­ter­mine when and how they would like to view the mod­ules. Williams not­ed that they are cog­nizant that the class­es are be­ing held dur­ing the va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, so al­low­ing stu­dents to set their times is one more pos­i­tive as­pect that the re­mote-learn­ing mech­a­nism will al­low. Stu­dents will al­so have ac­cess to their tu­tors at ded­i­cat­ed times for Q&A, which will be done as live ses­sions over video con­fer­enc­ing and then be is­sued an eval­u­a­tion to com­plete. At­ten­dees who meet the re­quire­ments will then re­ceive of­fi­cial cer­tifi­cates of com­ple­tion from CARIRI with the sup­port of their spon­sors.

One spon­sor is lo­cal, home-grown com­mu­ni­ca­tions so­lu­tion provider, bmo­bile. Its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty man­date lists youth ed­u­ca­tion as one of its pri­ma­ry pil­lars, and the com­pa­ny was keen to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing this pro­gramme with CARIRI. Ger­ard Coop­er, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Shared Ser­vices at TSTT, ex­plained, “This is one of the most pro­gres­sive pro­grammes that we have been ho­n­oured to sup­port as a com­pa­ny. Of course, it aligns with our role as a tech­nol­o­gy part­ner in the de­vel­op­ment of the na­tion, but be­yond that we see that tech­nol­o­gy camps like this, help to whet the ap­petite for non-tra­di­tion­al learn­ing routes and we look for­ward to see­ing some ex­em­plary stu­dents emerge not just from this it­er­a­tion this month but from con­tin­ued work or a ca­reer in cod­ing lat­er on.” bmo­bile joins oth­er lo­cal con­glom­er­ates and com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Re­pub­lic Bank, Caribbean Fi­nance Com­pa­ny, Qure Ltd, and Glob­al Foren­sics.

Williams was hap­py to wel­come the tele­com com­pa­ny as a con­tin­ued sup­port­er. “I’m very grate­ful that bmo­bile took up this of­fer as they are one of the lo­cal com­pa­nies that have been on­board since the last pro­gramme. We have been look­ing at grow­ing the pro­gramme and def­i­nite­ly have been able to do this with amaz­ing cor­po­rate sup­port,” Williams added. One in­ter­est­ing thing to emerge from the pro­mo­tion of this ini­tia­tive is that CARIRI field­ed many calls from par­ents and adults who are al­so keen to learn the skill of cod­ing. This ini­tia­tive would be the first time that the Cod­ing and Mo­bile App De­vel­op­ment pro­gramme is be­ing held vir­tu­al­ly, which has al­so al­lowed an in­crease in par­tic­i­pants in this tranche while still be­ing con­ducive to Pub­lic Health reg­u­la­tions.

The glob­al de­mand for per­sons with cod­ing skillsets con­tin­ues to in­crease, with new job op­por­tu­ni­ties in the sec­tor emerg­ing every day. Ac­cord­ing to the em­ploy­ment web­site, Glass­door.com, of the 50 Best Jobs in Amer­i­ca for 2021, the role of Ja­va De­vel­op­er is the most de­sir­able in terms of de­mand and pos­si­ble earn­ing po­ten­tial. The US Bu­reau of La­bor Sta­tis­tics (BLS) al­so projects that em­ploy­ment in these and re­lat­ed fields can de­cline up to 8% over the next decade. US-based busi­ness­es may seek to out­source projects to over­seas con­trac­tors due to price com­pet­i­tive­ness and the re­mote-readi­ness of the role it­self. With the prop­er prepa­ra­tion, T&T can ben­e­fit from these shifts in de­mand.