PUTRAJAYA — The National Coding Challenge (NCC), aimed to expose school children to the world of computers and programming, has helped developed entrepreneurial skills among participants at a very young age.
Finance Ministry National Strategy Unit Deputy Director (Policy) Guna Arulalan Krishta @ David said the NCC had shown tremendous outcome where the students had gone beyond the basic knowledge of using computers.
“Most of the young entreprenuers especially the startup, they mostly were involved in technology or internet centred activities and we want to inspire the students.
“The students have learned how to code and decode, creating applications and websites and we can see the excitement in them,” he told Bernama in an interview, here today.
Implemented by the Finance Ministry through the National Strategy Unit under the National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS), the NCC is the finale for participants of the Coding@Schools 2016 programme.
Coding@Schools, an initiative announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak in Budget 2016, aims to introduce primary school children between the ages of 10 and 12 into the world of computing and programming.
Guna Arulalan said this is to encourage them to become contributors to the internet rather than consumers and teach them problem solving and computational thinking skills.
“We are thinking of continuing this and we are looking at whether there is a need for enhancement so that when it reaches the students population we can be satisfied that they are tech savvy, can create webpages and apps, as we know it is a very huge industry now,” he said.
He said NCC was divided in two stages with Group A held at the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC) from Aug 14 to 16 while Group B is being held starting today until Thursday at RHR Hotel Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Kajang.
He added out of 1,500 students from 50 schools who trained in Coding@Schools, a total of 111 participants from 25 teams have been selected to compete in the NCC Group B.
Source : Bernama http://buff.ly/2gJ4sVG
Photo : codingatschools.com