Munster Programming Training goes from Strength to Strength!
The Department of Computer Science at University College Cork started again its outreach programme “Munster Programming Training” which is aimed at secondary school transition year students from the Munster area. This year more than 50 secondary school students from all over Munster area were enrolled to the programme. The aim of this program is to offer special training in computer programming as preparation for participation in the “All Irish Schools Programming Competition”. The training will also cover topics like web design, Flash animation and Multimedia production which the students can use in their scholar activities. The program will consist of a series of 20 formal and practical lectures that will be delivered by lecturers from the Department on Saturday mornings from 10.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m. between October and May.
By providing this program, we hope to achieve the following:
1. To give a short and basic introduction to computer programming.
2. To foster interest in computers by encouraging young students to learn about programming at an early age.
3. To prepare them for national and international programming competitions.
4. To give the students fundamental elements on web design, web animation, image and video production.
The programme is now in its 4th year of running and more that 100 secondary school pupils have graduated from it. As a consequence of this programme many of the 2004-2005 MPT students are now studying Computer Science or computer related programmes in UCC. Moreover, the MPT students have won the junior and senior sections in the “All Ireland School Programming Competition” for the last 3 years. We are also proud to mention that Katie O’Mahony, 6th year pupil in St Aloysius School in Cork and Barry Hurley, former pupil in Colaiste Choilm in Ballincollig, now CS student in UCC, represented Ireland to the International Olympiad in Informatics that took place in August 2007 in Croatia.
Dr Sabin Tabirca, the MPT Coordinator and Daniel Doolan with some of this year MPT students