Final Presentations DeltaV 301 Class : Bio:Neos

As technology becomes more entrenched in our daily lives it is evident that coding will continue to be an in demand skill for some time to come. According to a recent report from Burning Glass Technologies the the demand for coding skills is expanding. According to that report programming jobs are growing 50% faster than the market overall, and what I have seen happening in our local Iowa City and Cedar Rapids communities seems to echo that growth.

Our team at Bio::Neos has been active in our community and throughout the state in promoting computer science education for k-12 students. We enjoy making sure that young students have the resources that they need to be successful in their futures, but unfortunately, sometimes people don't get an opportunity to explore these careers until much later in their life. And that is why I am so excited about the new DeltaV program started by NewBoCo. For those who are interested in finding out if coding is a career field that they want to pursue or for professionals who want to who want to learn more about coding in a non-traditional educational setting, DeltaV Code School offers a tiered coding program that is creating opportunities for exploration, training, and job placement for those interested in learning more.

Now that the school has been running for a few sessions, I had an opportunity to attend a presentation of the final projects for the DeltaV 301 Intermediate Software Development course. Although I arrived late, I got to see some great presentations! I was especially impressed by the students grasp of terms and their ability to define those terms for the audience.

The students worked with a wide variety of technologies. They demonstrated a good separation of work and team organization. The students also did a self-assessment where they talked about how the could have done better with organizing the team as well as time management. They also described the pitfalls of over-complicating a problem, such as creating a library for swipes. Overall the students learned how to operate under pressure and make decisions based on priorities and project goals.

In the future I hope to see more community members attending and supporting events like this. Follow us on LinkedIn to join us at other events and opportunities to promote computer science education and support our tech community in the corridor.