Written by Halimatul Nabilah
Amelia Lockley is a 12 years old who learnt to code three years ago, and she impressed the world with her skills when even the Parliament is acquiring her to teach coding to the politicians. This little girl believes that everyone needs to learn to code at a young age and it a very helpful skill. She was invited by the parliament and flew to Wellington on May 8 to teach the politicians about coding. She was accompanied by an expert team including Nanogirl herself: Dr Michelle Dickinson who is the recipient of the Women of Influence Award and a role-model for young women that encourages more women to move into STEM (a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics). They facilitated the special Code Club Aotearoa event. Code Club Aotearoa is a nation-wide network of volunteer-led coding clubs, with the goal of teaching coding to all young New Zealanders. At this event, the politicians will learn to code together with primary student around the Wellington region.
Amelia is part of the almost 300 Code Clubs around the country that are teaching up to 10,000 children on the skill that is a staple to the information technology industry. Currently, Amelia is working with the immigrants to develop an application that helps the immigrants to find essential services including schools and banks when they first arrive in New Zealand, but she’s hoping to forge a career as a mechatronic engineer. United Future Leader, Peter Dunne hosted that workshop to show his colleagues about the remarkable talents possessed by this young people. In fact, National MP, Brett Hudson who spent 20 years working in information technology before joining the Parliament was also impressed and amazed by the skills that those children have because even an experienced person like him are not aware of some of the knowledge and skill shared by the children. Hence, we need to acknowledge the importance of learning to code since the benefit can be to the individual and even to the country and it is clear that there are no boundaries regarding age to learn how to code. Everyone can become a coder!