WordCamp Miami is proud to have our third year with our Kid’s Panel. This panel is an insightful interview with several youths ages 6-14. The focus? How they publish on the web in 2018.
What tools do they use? What are their friends using, and why? Do they publish with WordPress?
Why are these questions important to the larger WordPress community? Because it’s vital for current WordPress users, developers, and product maker to know what the next generation is using. When it comes to technology, you don’t adapt – you die. And getting an insight to how youth is publishing on the web is one way to figure that out.
Aleyna Harris (Age 16) Junior- Lauderhill 6-12 High School
Aleyna was introduced to coding in 7th grade and continued on through Highschool. She had the opportunity to volunteer with oracle where she was able to learn web development.
She has taken part in competitions in which she was able to be on teams with her friend. With the help of the oracle coaches and Codecademy Aleyna now knows HTML, HTML5, CSS and SQL.
Aleyna is originally from Jamaica and her future aspirations are to go to Universty where she will be able to study computer Programming.
Alyssa Harris (Age 16) Junior Lauderhill 6-12
“Hello, my name is Alyssa Harris I am 16 years old and I am a Junior at Lauderhill 6-12. I started coding in seventh grade I have learned a variety of codling languages including HTML CSS PYTHON and just recently SQL (Structured Query Language) which is used for database programming. I was introduced to WordPress about a year and a half ago and have used it since then to enter various competitions.“
Edward Pratt (Age 16) Junior Lauderhill 6-12
Edward began learning how to use WordPress his tenth grade year. He attended many WordPress workshops which was sponsored by his Oracle club at school. He was then able to use his knowledge with WordPress during a summer internship he had with the Yeager Companies. He also participated in a competition within his Oracle club where he was placed in a team and had to develop a website, a WordPress powered blog and an application using the Agile Process(Scrum). Edward describes his WordPress experience as interesting and fun.
During his learning, Edward has successfully learned how to use HTML, CSS, SQL, Java Script and Python. Prior to him joining the Oracle club, he was learning make animations and has also participated in a Drone Competition FAU High School. Edward is also a very active person and takes part in his school’s activities. He is a member of his school’s Yearbook club, T.V Production club, NHS, L.I.N.K.S club, and T.U.G.A.
On his days off, Edward can be seen reading, drawing, playing music, hanging out with friends, going to the gym or writing a poem. He also enjoys going for walks and admiring nature’s beauty. He aspires to travel the world and enjoy life.
Aiden Lucayo 5th Grade Manatee Bay Elementary School
Aidan enjoys playing soccer and the guitar and his favorite subject in school is math. Aidan enjoys traveling and visiting National Parks where he has earned Junior Ranger badges from the parks he has visited. He also enjoys cooking, robotics, reading and video games.
Jayda Washington-Boothe 4th grade Honor-Roll Student at Manatee Bay Elementary
This is Jayda’s 2nd year at WordCamp Miami 2018. The experiences she gained at last year’s event has thrusted her into the local, state, and national spotlight as a girl who loves STEM. Currently, she is learning more features in WordPress, and continues using Microsoft Office 365 ‘s SWAY, Minecraft, Code.org. and was introduced to the MIT AI2 App Companion. Jayda is a member of Black Girls Code- Miami Chapter, Manatee Bay Elementary Student Council Secretary and the US Track and Field Association. She volunteers at Dare to Care Outreach, The Faith Center Ministries Youth Department, The Mayors Chess Challenge of Broward County, and loves dancing Hip-Hop!Her future career path is to become an engineer.
Victoria Dameus (Age 16) Junior at Lauderhill 6-12 STEM-MED magnet school
Victoria Dameus has become a role model, a coach, an entrepreneur, and a leader. Arriving from Haiti in 2013, Victoria was faced with the challenges of many new immigrants, who would have thought that her inability to speak a word of English was going to be her key motivator for her early academic and leadership success?
Victoria managed to develop her leadership role as an active member of the National Honor Society’s Lauderhill 6-12 chapter (current Secretary), a student member of the North Broward County Chapter of The Links. A lead anchor and writer of the school’s television production studio, Yearbook Copy Editor, and a founding member of the Oracle Coding group. It was her active involvement in the coding group that propelled Victoria forward. As if learning English as a second language was not enough to keep her occupied, Victoria found the time to learn HTML, HTML5, CSS, CSS+, Bootstrap, Python, SQL, and JavaScript. This opened a new world for her. Identifying problems and developing computer science solutions came naturally for Victoria, her work has gained the attention of the South Florida community and she has already made a footprint of her unique user experience web style. As a web coder and designer, she applied her programming knowledge to recreate a website for Doris Canady, this was her first exposure to web development for the community. CSS and JavaScript were new languages for Victoria and she was quite fluent- creating buttons and layouts improved page management resulting in an upgraded and gorgeous page. This was the first out of a class project and many others have followed, such as five web pages created using WordPress.
Victoria’s determination to lead by example has provided Victoria with 1st place recognition for Human Capital Management Jr. End of the Year competition and the Yaeger Redesign Project. Her community involvement led her to present at the 9th annual WordCamp Miami where as part of a panel discussion she shared her insights on web tools and publishing in the 21st century. She parlayed these experiences into a summer job atConceptual Communications, a marketing, branding, public relations and social media company in Ft. Lauderdale. She was also nominated for a Leaders recognizing Leaders award. She is currently working with industry professional in making the web a friendlier place. Her efforts to improve herself has impacted all those that work with her-both personally and professionally.
