Simon Forwood wants to build foundational coding skills for children in the face of AI. Photo: Tenele Conway.
World-class IT programmer Simon Forwood is set to deliver a coding camp for school-aged children at Bungendore’s Carrington Inn these school holidays.
Designed to teach foundational coding skills to aspiring developers and curious newcomers to the field, Simon will be leaning on his background working for companies such as Spotify, Macquarie Bank and Infomedia.
It’s the first time Simon will deliver the camp, which goes by the name of Code Warriors, in the Canberra region, and the workshops, which range from two to five days, are designed to suit kids from primary school through to high school.
General manager of the Carrington Inn Sean Dodd (left), who will be hosting the workshops with Simon Forwood. Photo: Tenele Conway.
The Code Warriors code camp comes at a pivotal moment in the IT industry with AI shaking up the status quo. It’s an issue that Simon wants to tackle head-on, giving kids a solid ground to start on when considering future careers in IT.
“It’s a massively changing dynamic right now. I don’t have any developer friends whose lives haven’t been completely changed by AI in the last few years,” Simon said.
“We want to teach kids how to use AI the best way, and to do that you need those foundational coding skills.”
Simon said the key to working effectively with AI was to not fall for the temptation of handing over your coding problem to it but to harness its power alongside your own skills.
“I think all developers have that fear for the next generation of developers that they’re not going to build skills to really be effective. You’re really just giving over control to something that is massively powerful, but if you don’t have that fine-tuned ability to control what you are getting with it, we’ll all be useless and out of jobs.”
Whilst the Code Warriors camps are a new initiative from Simon, he’s no stranger to teaching, having followed a whim to India in 2003 which saw him teaching kids maths and English in the Himalayan region.
Simon Forwood not only has an IT background but he has a teaching degree and taught students in India. Photo: Simon Forwood.
Finding a love for teaching through the experience, he came back to Australia to get his teaching degree, something he then deployed on the ground in India for six more years of teaching before returning to Australia to start a family and return to his roots in programming.
With his return to education imminent with the upcoming workshops, Simon does so with a focus on making education accessible to all with affordable prices and sponsored places for a couple of children whose families may not have the means to cover the cost.
“We wanted to make it available to kids whose parents may not have a lot of money,” Simon said.
With a number of enrolments for the courses already in place, Simon has been surprised that no-one has taken him up on the offer of sponsored places yet and is keen to spread the word that if there are kids out there who love coding or are interested in exploring coding, but their family doesn’t have the means, they should get in touch with him.
Code Warrior Code Camps kick off on 6 October at the Carrington Inn in Bungendore. To register, head to the Code Warriors website.
With possible future classes dependent on demand, Simon also encourages students who may not be able to attend the workshops these school holidays to reach out through the website and register interest for possible future dates.
