Twenty-four young people from across Anguilla have just been trained in various areas of computer applications and programmes that will be of considerable assistance now and in the future.
“The five-day training, under the aegis of the Department of Youth and Culture, was conducted by computer specialist and consultant, Mr. Jose Vanterpool, and Mr. Gino Webster of Thoughtful Digital Agency.
The training, in a very impressive and orderly setting, was carried out in the computer lab at Campus B of the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School. Speaking to The Anguillian newspaper, Mr. Vanterpool explained:
Participants in computer application training course 
L-R: Mr. Jose Vanterpool
and Mr. Gino Webster
“The Department of Youth and Culture reached out to me, a few weeks ago, for their Summer Youth Escape Programmes,” he recalled. “They told me that one of the courses that they always wanted to offer was a Coding Class or an App-building Class – but the issue was that they never had anyone available to do the teaching. Having returned to Anguilla, and wanted to teach kids this Code, being my passion, and wanted to shift towards Anguilla being a digital society, I jumped at the opportunity. This is the perfect example because Anguilla cannot be a digital society if we don’t equip our youth – who are going to be the persons who live in the society – with the skills needed to thrive in it.”
Vanterpool went on: “When I was younger, I always wanted to get into computers. I always wanted to learn the programme but there was no one to teach me how to do it. I was not actually able to learn to code until I was about sixteen – when I was first introduced to it – although I knew from when I was about ten to twelve years that I was interested in learning.
“It now feels good to have the opportunity to teach students. We have twenty-four students ranging from ages twelve to eighteen. It was a bit of a challenge putting together a course that would appeal to students of such a varying age range. We therefore decided to target beginners who had no knowledge – as well as novices who may have played around with programming a bit but who would like to learn the basics and become better at it.
“This week we are offering a five-day introduction to Coding and App-building. We are focusing on web-development; building web apps – and we are teaching them how to build websites such as HTML, Hypertext Markup Language; CCS (Cascading Style Sheets); and Java Script – the scripting language used to bind it altogether and add functionality to your site.”
The students were allowed to do a number of practical projects and were guided in using the principles to help them to achieve what they wanted. Two of the students focused on building a website on cars. They listed about twenty different sport cars on their website – the names, engine sizes etc and a link to buy them.
Mr. Vanterpool saw the training as “a direct path to remote job opportunities.” He observed that later on the youngsters, at any age, could work at home as developers with Google or Facebook.
Vanterpool first studied IT Coding as a Fifth Form student in Anguilla. He went on to study Computer Science in Sixth Form where he was exposed to real Coding for two years. After that he studied Computer Science formally at the University of Bristol for four years, as an Island Scholar. There he achieved a Master’s Degree in Computer Science with First Class Honours.
Asked about any assistance he was having with the training course, he said: “Because the class was so large, and it was my first time doing the training, I reached out to one of my colleagues, a very close friend, for some assistance. My Co-facilitator for this week is Gino Webster who works at Thoughtful Digital Agency as a developer and I am so thankful to him for coming to work with me.”
Webster said he was happy to have had the opportunity to assist with the course. He works as a website developer/software engineer, and is seen ever so often with Ms. Tahira Banks, owner of Thoughtful Digital Agency.
