“I cloned myself and can be in multiple schools at the same time” says Co Louth founder of The Code Lab

She has now launched a special schools edition which was unveiled recently in Dundalk’s Castletown Girls’ Primary School.

"I had taught coding in the Castletown Girls School before the pandemic so it was nice to go back there.

Joan, who lives in Castlebellingham developed The Code Lab after taking an extended career break when her children were young.

Having worked in the IT sector for many years, she got involved with volunteer with CoderDojo and began doing coding workshops in Dundalk library, Creative Spark and local schools.

Then the country shut down in March 2020 and she was asked by the library to do a few pre-recorded lessons on coding.

That was the lightbulb moment which led to her setting up The Code Lab – a website providing step by step lessons in coding for children which proved very popular.

Now, she has built an online coding platform especially for schools.

"This means that The Code Lab lessons are running in the school without me there!" she says.

"The lessons are pre-recorded and are available on demand. They are step-by-step video lessons with a watch-and-pause system, so the class watch me do a step, then they pause and do that step themselves, then resume and continue.”

“The pupils learn to code in Scratch, a colourful block-based coding language designed for children.

“There is also a teacher’s tutorial available so they don’t need to know coding but I suspect that they will learn it along with the pupils as the lessons progress.”

She wanted to trial the lessons in the Castletown Girls School as it was an all-girls school and also a Deis School.

"We need more girls in technology and STEM and it was important to me that it was a Deis school as I wanted it to be accessible to all. While I sell courses online for parents to buy and use with their kids, I wanted this to be available to everyone. ”She launched the programme with the girls in 4th, 5th and 6th in the school during Tech Week in mid-April.

Over the course of five weeks, the girls are creating one animation and two mini games.

“These girls, like all other kids of their age, consume a lot of social media but they have limited exposure to other valuable technologies, and they don't see where technology can benefit them in their lives,” says Joan.

She says that both teacher Ms Neary and herself were keen to get the lessons started before the 6th class girls head off to secondary school.

“We want to show these girls the value of technology beyond social media.”