Eko-Konnect Research and Education Initiative
Lagos, Nigeria, 2014, April 24
Eko-Konnect Research and Education Initiative (a consortium of Higher Education Institutions in Lagos State) joined the global celebration of Girls in ICT Day on 24th of April, 2014 at University of Lagos, Nigeria with the theme 'Computer Education for Girls using Robotics'.
The event was attended by senior secondary students and their ICT teachers from 7 secondary schools.
Mrs Felicia I. Oyeyinka (Principal Program Analyst, CITM, Yabatech, Lagos) opened the event and Dr. Florence Oladeji (Department of Computer Science, University of Lagos) spoke on 'Opportunities in ICT for Girls' and shared her personal experience with the girls challenging them to think outside the box and to embrace the bright future in ICT.
Damilola Afolabi (Volunteer, Eko-Konnect) described what International Girls in ICT was about.
Paula Aliu and Stanley Agba both students of the Department of Computer Engineering and Temiloluwa Bodunwa, a student of Computer Science demonstrated how Robots could be manipulated by writing some simple lines of code.
After the demonstrations the secondary school girls were divided into groups and shown how to write and run some simple programs to make the robot carry out tasks including movement, alter LED display, hearing test, announce current room temperature and use the robot as a gaming console. Eight other female students from the computer science department of the university participated in the breakout sessions to mentor the secondary school girls. The type of robots used on the day were the Finch robots.
The Girls in ICT club was formally launched to provide a platform for further development of secondary school girls programming abilities. The 'Adopt a Bot' programme from Eko-Konnect will be one of the main activities taking place in the club.
The "Adopt a Bot" Programme will be a yearlong programme culminating in a Robotics competition among the member schools of the Girls in ICT Club. The program is divided into 4 sessions with each session spanning a period of about 3 months.
- Session 1: Getting Started with Robotics: Introduces pupils to robotics and the programming fundamentals used by robotics.
- Session 2: Programming With Robotics: More in depth teaching of the programming languages and platforms used for manipulating robots.
- Session 3: Using Robotics with Raspberry Pi and untethered: How to use low cost devices like Raspberry Pi to control robots and using robots untethered with arduino usb microcontrollers.
- Session 4: Preparing for Robotic Competition: The members of the ICT for Girls Club will design a robotic project.
Datasphir Solutions Limited donated Monitors and Thin clients to the participating schools and promised to give out 1 Finch Robot to each school when the 'Adopt a Bot programme' is in its 2nd session.
There was quiz sessions, fun time and videos from code.org to entertain and encourage the girls.
The event received positive feedback from the students and teachers in attendance and all registered to join the club and 11 university students and 5 lecturers from Computer Science volunteered to be mentors for the club.
Total number of people in attendance was 85.
