This week our budding band of programmers began to learn the most important skill in programming - troubleshooting. First we went over common programming errors, followed by some actual errors that students in our class encountered last week. We discussed how to troubleshoot each of these errors and how to look at the compiler message to see the approximate error where the problem occurred.

After that, teacher Francis led the girls in an exercise to create an Excel spreadsheet and practice typing.

Next week, armed with our new troubleshooting skills, we'll tackle more programs and discuss magnetism and how the hard drive works.

If you're following our coding program in rural Sierra Leone you may be thinking to yourself, what's next after this 7 week course? We are working on that! We hope to offer a new course to take the girls coding to the next level. We're also working with local Sierra Leone software development companies to organize a trip to Freetown so they can see real coding in action and gain some understanding around the practical application of this skill.

These programs are made possible through our donors and the many volunteers we have in place both in the United States and Freetown. If you are inspired by this and would like to volunteer your time to a similar project then get in touch by emailing info@thevillagelink.org. We may just want to collaborate with you!

Alternatively you can make a contribution to a program similar to this one here.