TechAcademy, an initiative between academia and industry that offers free courses on various topics in technology, supporting a better preparation for job placement.
In February of this year, the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá (UTP), together with a group of private companies, launched an initiative that seeks to prepare students in the area of technology through on-site courses on various topics using active education methodologies. Under the name, TechAcademy these courses are available not only to UTP students, but to anyone who wishes to prepare themselves in subjects that are not usually taught in official courses but that represent knowledge that will definitely help students to be more prepared for the labor market. Some of the courses dictated in this first launch are topics such as database, Office tools, web application development with languages such as Ruby and PHP, virtualization as well as softskills courses such as entrepreneurship and leadership.
This is how we took part
EtyaLab was part of this project. As a volunteer mentor of the web application development course using Ruby on Rails, it was a unique experience. First time offering mentoring in a different way to students of different levels of experience and knowledge. From high school students interested in learning more about software as a possible career path to more experienced programmers looking to learn a new programming tool. It was a challenge to be able to adapt to such differences in skills and what we still need to keep improving.
Presentation of Demos
As part of the course, students also had the opportunity to learn a bit more about agile development methodologies such as Scrum as well as the use of Git as version control software.
Although not all students were able to complete the program, 11 in total successfully completed their projects. A total of four projects were demonstrated. Students performed two demos during the course. These demos proved to be an enriching experience, not only for the students themselves but for me as well. Several were able to share new tools and interesting data during their demo presentations.
These are the interesting projects that resulted from this course:
AppTurismo, by Andres Franco, for product and tour package reservation management.
TouPost by Gabriel Velarde, Juan B. Guevara, Ulises Madero and Rafael Segistan, a social network to make “Tous” or publications.
ShopNet, by Kevin Kantule, Francisco Marchena, Brian Nieto and Carlos Villavicencio, a store and a virtual store at the same time.
ServiMarket, by Arturo Requena, a digital platform for people interested in providing a service, helping them to find a new way to generate income.
Developer Community
It is a great satisfaction to know that we have supported in helping to grow the Ruby on Rails developer community in our country. I am sure that the guys will continue in this adventure of using Ruby on Rails in their projects. And as a result of that interest, the Rails Community Facebook group in Panama was created as a collateral of this course, hoping that we keep in touch sharing knowledge of this framework, and that we integrate more people to be part of this community.
Group of students who were part of this first Ruby on Rails course.
