SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A former student at Range Lake North School is volunteering to teach computer programming at his alma mater.

Self-taught computer programmer Ryan Chenkie said he's returned to his former stomping grounds to pass on the technical skills which have opened doors for him.

"It's opened up a huge kind of new world of possibilities in my career," said Chenkie. "I changed careers about a year-and-a half ago, once I started getting into programming and started realizing there was a lot of job opportunities."

Chenkie said he was born and raised in Yellowknife, heading to school in Ottawa in 2005 where he earned a degree in geomatics - the gathering, storing, and delivering of geographic information, or spatially referenced information, using modern Geographic Information System (GIS) software. He said when he returned to the territory he worked on GIS projects for the Tlicho government and the GNWT before switching careers and landing a code-writing job for a U.S. company about a year ago.

"I haven't done any GIS work since I started my new job but it doesn't mean I won't pick it up again some day," said Chenki, adding that developing an understanding of code-writing sets him in better stead to work with GIS software. "You can delve deeper into the code to understand the GIS information better."

Chenkie said he learned what he knows about code writing by watching online tutorials.

Darryl Mitchener, vice-principal at Range Lake North School, is a proponent of teaching code-writing to elementary-aged students. He said Chenkie volunteered to go into classrooms at the beginning of the school year to help teach students the skills, offering sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

He's been working with students on building websites from the bottom up.

"There's lots of tools online to build a website but I'm teaching the kids how to do it from scratch," he said. "We're writing the code for it, using HTML (hypertext markup language) and CSS (cascading style sheets)."

In December 2014, Mitchener prompted his students to take part in the Hour Of Code - a global event held in more than 180 countries, where students spent one hour learning about computer programming. The group behind the event - Code.org - estimates more than a million computer science jobs will have opened in the U.S. alone by 2020.

Chenkie said learning the ropes of code-writing has certainly led to opportunities for him, and he expects handiness with the technology will become more important in the future.

"I think technology is really shaping the future of the workforce, much in the same way that people years ago were dedicated typists. Years and years down the road, we're not going to see as many dedicated positions for programmers. We'll still see a lot, because it's a very specialized thing but I think it'll become almost expected one day, that people have some kind of technical know-how."

Chenkie said some of his students are enjoying the classes more than others.

"There are certainly some I can tell enjoy it more," he said. "That's to be expected. It can be a little bit dry if you're spending a lot of time trying to figure out why your code isn't working."

Often solving a broken page comes down to finding one character out of place, said Chenkie, which can be a test for young students. He said he's teaching them with a live-feedback feature, so they can see their changes happening right away.

"Then there's not this lag time while the students are waiting for things to refresh," he said.

Chenkie said students in Yellowknife do have access to good equipment but more attention needs to be put on learning the language of code.

"I think in general, probably all across the country, I don't think programming is being taught very widely," he said. "And I think it should be, especially at the high school level. I think programming should be almost a required course."

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