Unplugged coders heading to national champs
Three Cape Town library teams are set to compete in the national competition, later this year, after they won the final round of the coding tournament on Wednesday.
The Valhalla Park library team won the first place followed by Belhar and Elsies River libraries' teams, respectively, in the final leg of the tournament that was presented by the City of Cape Town Libraries and Information Service.
The final competition was held at Goodwood library after the libraries-level competitions were held on Mandela Day. Twenty-eight libraries competed drawing 438 participants, said the City.
The top 12 libraries were then selected and had their teams going head-on in the final round to select the top three teams which will represent the city in a national competition on the date that is yet to be announced.
The Valhalla team are known as Techno Titans, the Belhar team as Team Rangers and the Elsies River team are called Tribal Chiefs.
The City’s Libraries Youth Coordinator, Tasneem Adriaans, said the competition teaches participants the computational thinking, collaboration and communication.
“It lays that foundation, teaches them how to think, so that when they move to plugged coding, which is done on a computer, they really have an idea of how to think, what instructions to give to the computer so that it does what they want it to do,” she said.
The Valhalla Park librarian and the team coach, Randal Rousseau, said he brought books and practicals to make his team succeed and earn the first spot.
“We actually ran drills in our parking lot at the library shouting left, right, backwards, forward. They were actually physically competing, physically running one next to one another and trying to just get the move sorted.
“And other games like book mazes, we put book mazes in the library. And then that's got to do with direction and that works with left and right. So all of those things are eventually making an impact on how they do their code on the day,” he said.
