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Showing posts from February, 2016

STEM - Introduction

I am Phyllis Nassuna Ntananga, a 22 old final year student of the Bachelor of Information Technology program at Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Mbarara. I have a keen interest in Computer Software Programming as well as an equally strong enthusiasm for Engineering and Robotics. For the bigger part of my time at this university, I have participated in several local and global computer technology-themed innovation challenges and competitions. I have as well as volunteered in as many ICT focused initiatives More recently, I took part as a trainer in the Africa Code Week, a program organized by Google that was aimed at introducing primary school children to computer programming using a software called Scratch by volunteering students and ICT professionals. Personally, I discovered that this was a great experience for the school children at the two the schools we went to. These children showed so much excitement when we introduced the program that at the end of each 1-2 hou

Journey to Innovation

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When I reported to university for my first year, I knew what program I was going to do and I always answered the question “...which program are you planning on doing?” quite well. If by any chance anyone had asked me about the kinds of activities or skills my program contained, that would have been the end of me had it been an admission question. Strangely, in my Secondary Level I had hated computers and anything was concerned with them. Yet, here I was, going to do a Computer Science program. The first week involved Fresher Orientation and was really hard for me, having to  be in the computer lab and failing to even power on a computer. Soon, all that changed. This was when I first heard of the Google Student Ambassador program at the MUST. Out of curiosity, I often wondered what it takes to be a Google Student Ambassador and this is what opened my eyes, my capabilities and most importantly, my love for technology. I really wanted to know what it would take me to become an ambas