Phyllis Ntananga – Oysters and Pearls

About Phyllis Ntananga

I have a great passion in technology and learning more of it. And I have big hopes of every lady embracing technology, taking part in its creation and development. I am currently a student pursing a bachelor's degree in information technology at Mbarara University of Science & Technology.

Uganda – Holiday Robotics Training Sept 2016
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Uganda – Holiday Robotics Training Sept 2016

Above are the photos from the Holiday Robotics Training held in September 2016. Below is Ntananga Phyllis blog post (from Tech Women Uganda) describing the training.

In early September 2016, I got another opportunity to mentor a group of young people from Gulu in Mobile application development during the Holiday Robotics Training organized by Oysters & Pearls – Uganda at their Gulu town premises. Running for two weeks, this training covered areas like Video Game Design, Robotics and Electronics, Minecraft and Mobile Applications Development. Unlike the January camp, this training was not residential and participants attended from Monday to Saturday between 8AM to 5PM.

A day before the official start of the training, mentors made preparations and arranged the different equipment to be used. It had been 7 months since I was last in Gulu and I couldn’t help but notice in awe the progress Oysters and Pearls had made in regards to their Maker Space – all thanks to Sandra Washburn for her love, dedication and motivation in equipping tech-savvy young people with technological skills to aid them become the change makers this nation needs.

The Maker Space is perfectly set up with all the requirements that anyone with a dream of changing the world

Robotics Camp by Oysters & Pearls – Uganda

(this is a reprint from Ntananga Phyllis’s article from her blog: Tech Women Uganda.)

On a very hot Thursday in the first week of January 2016, I hopped on a bus headed for Gulu. I was super excited. It was my first time to go to the North. Naturally, I had all the imaginations anyone could have about an entirely new place. The journey was long but to my surprise I was awake the whole time, thanks to the fear of missing out on the adventure. I saw different things like rare fruits that we barely have in the Central or Western region of the country and the sight of the Karuma Bridge, one of the many beautiful things of nature with which God blessed Uganda. Before sunset, we were in Gulu town for the Robotics Camp.

That evening, the trainers that had arrived for the camp all gathered to be taken through the materials and resources that were going to be used for the next two weeks in the camp. As a software developer without much knowledge in hardware/embedded systems, most of the terms and materials were so new to me – stuff like