Young coders unlocking future sustainability goals

Six schools and three coding clubs from Meath showcased their digital and STEAM prowess at the Microsoft Dream Space DoYour:Bit Challenge held in Dublin. The participants demonstrated their coding skills, research capabilities, and their knack for identifying opportunities to address the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The participating schools, namely St Joseph’s National School and St Joseph’s Post Primary School in Navan, St Patrick’s Ughtyneill, St Patrick's, Slane, Scoil Chomcille, Skyrne, and Carnaross National School, presented various projects. These ranged from managing wind farms and biodiversity counters to road safety measures and conservation efforts for beluga whales and sea turtles. Other projects focused on addressing flooding, improving soil quality, and developing fitness trackers.

The OurKidsCode clubs, Drumree Coders, Bective Future Coders, and The Crazy Royal Coders, embarked on projects aimed at saving bees, growing crops hydroponically, and monitoring frogs and fairies.

Bective Future Coders and Drumree Coders were honoured respectively with the Global Goal Award, sponsored by Meath County Council, and the Most Innovative Project Award, sponsored by Microbit.

St. Patrick’s Ughtyneill was recognised for the most Collaborative Schools Project Sponsored by Meath County Council and awarded Rural Future Champions sponsored by the Department of Rural and Community Development.

Their project tackled the issue of river pollution caused by the overspreading of slurry on high run-off lands. The students learned about the environmental impact of overspreading, calculated the optimal speed for a tractor to minimise overspreading, and developed code to control a robotic tractor to spread on a model field near the school.

Meanwhile the team from St Patrick's, Slane who presented their project on the Sensory Classroom won an award being recognised as Future STEM Leaders.

James O’Connor, site leader of Microsoft Ireland, welcomed the children from Meath and commended them for their incredible work and their ability to apply technology to the sustainable development goals. The children had the opportunity to present their projects to evaluators from Microsoft and other stakeholder organisations, play games on Xbox, and create their own Minecraft art. They also interacted with coders working on new games for Xbox, learning about their journey into coding and their favourite games.

Congratulating the participating schools, Kieran Kehoe, chief executive of Meath County Council, said: “This is a great event for all the children. Their ingenuity and ability to identify problems and work on developing solutions has been a thrill to see. A massive congratulations must go to all the children, their teachers, and the parents of the OurKidsCode clubs for all their efforts over the last seven months.”

Meath County Council hopes to expand the program to more schools and support the development of more OurKidsCode Clubs in the county in the next school year. OurKidsCode will also be running taster workshops in Meath libraries during the summer.