Khayelitsha youth from the Future Learning Institution learnt coding and robotics skills from 16 American students during the June school holiday.
Professor Bob Allen from the University of Mercer in the United States of America said the Khayelitsha pupils are learning computer skills while his students are learning about the cultures in South Africa.
He said he has been visiting Khayelitsha since 2019 and each year they try to be different and do some coding and programming language.
However, he said this year they spent a significant amount of time teaching coding robots and added a training-the-teacher week.
He said they really want to ignite a passion for computer science among the youth of Khayelitsha.
“Fundamentally we want to ensure there is some coding going on this side of the world. We want to equip teachers on how to do computer science classes in their curriculum. I would love to have monthly virtual lessons so that my students can keep teaching. We have the same problems here and over there with schools situated in the rural areas where they do not have computer science teachers.”
Future Learning Institution founder, Filbert Mushiringi, said he was excited about the future as he intends to establish a robotics league in Khayelitsha so that they could have a strong robotics team that can actually compete with the rest of the world.
He said the department of education has rolled out robotics as part of the curriculum but there are no teachers.
“We want to be able to train these teachers. We want to ensure that we empower pupils including the teachers about coding and robotics and we do not want to leave anyone behind,” he said.
