Jay, sharing his love of robotics in his local community, UK

Jay’s story. Take one. Action.

My mission is to spread the word of computing and programming because not many people know about these subjects. And it’s very helpful as in the future, everything will be electronic and it’ll be filled with technology.

When I started coding, I was very young and I always wondered how I could make my own game. I started to discover that it actually was very fun. I could create anything I wanted. My imagination was run wild.

He’s a very active child, and he seeks challenges. And robotics and coding has given him those challenges. And then when he overcomes these challenges, he feels very proud and he feels a sense of accomplishment. His conventional learning limited him to a box. With robotics and coding, what Jay has learned is to think out of the box and without any limits. And this has helped him achieve amazing things.

So when I went to Coolest Projects, it was massive and there were tons of different people there, and they shared their projects with me. It was quite fun interacting with the community. I definitely felt like I had made new friends and it was a great learning experience for me to socialise with others who are with my same liking. It was quite fun seeing how they made them and what they used.

So Jay, when he makes these projects, generally, it’s a mock-up on cardboard, but then it doesn’t proceed beyond cardboard. The cardboard project itself becomes a robot.

I don’t want to spend much money because it’s not necessary when you actually have an alternative that works perfectly fine and it is for cheap. My inspiration for Oxy-Pi came from the amount of ventilators that were actually in the hospital during the major COVID times. And also my dad. He was in the hospital for quite a long time. He had to go onto a ventilator. So I just decided it would be a nice project to do based on these hard times of COVID.

In this area, there are many different people who I teach. I teach adults, teenagers, children, and my favourite thing about coding and robotics is it’s a new experience every day for me and for other people. When I go out and teach, I love it so much because it’s really accessible. It helps me build my confidence. It helps them to discover, to learn, to create. And it’s really fun. I think this is going to stick with me for a very long time.

Jay has been doing teaching and coding sessions in classes for probably the last four or five years. He’s very competent at it and we utilise his skills wisely and the class teachers learn a lot from him, not just the children. The children do respond really well to each other’s feedback and coaching, but we find that if a child says it sort of has extra worth as well.

So this is a message to everyone out there in the world that robotics and coding is really fun. It boosts your creativity and you should never, ever give up whenever you try. And if you keep trying, you’ll definitely reach your goals.