TECHNO PRODIGY DOMINIC DARBY
IT’S easy to describe 11year-old Dominic Darby as a technology prodigy. He’s one of the 17 winners of the recent XPRIZE Connect Code Games: a global game-making challenge. Darby beat out over 3,000 applicants worldwide in the 10 to 18 age group, where 70 of those competing were from Jamaica.
Do you remember what you were doing when you were six years old? Well, at this tender age, Darby was already coding. According to his mother Shellian Darby, he was introduced to the Scratch coding platform and website-building when he attended summer school at The University of the West Indies, Mona, for two years. “I noticed his interest in technology early on, he gravitated to the apps on my phone and he would gravitate quickly to my ipad. He would go through the games very quickly and would reach higher levels than I could — once I saw this, I had to look for opportunities for him,” she disclosed.
Darby entered his first international competition last year, where he used Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Scratch coding software to create a game he named How to Fall. The main character moves through multiple levels where he faces a series of challenges before conquering each stage. Being named one of the winners was a surprise as he did not expect to win.
His game was named Best in Show, and he took home the cash prize of US$1,000 in the junior division. The exceptional 11-year old, who cites Minecraft and Roblox as his favourite games, is also a lover of chess and tennis which he names as a few of the things he does for fun when he’s not coding. Technology allows him to take a systemic approach in his daily routine, including attending school online, coding for a few hours and then doing extra-curricular activities.
Behind every child prodigy are supportive parents, and Shellian Darby is the perfect support system for her son. “As a parent, you learn that it is important to support or engage your children in the activities that they like based on their interest, because it’s easier for them to learn and grow [when] they are doing something they love,” she explained. She believes parents can help to nurture their children’s interests by researching programmes and investing in books as well as various courses and classes themselves to help with their growth. “This allows the child to feel more confident to learn, [seeing] that their parents are a part of their journey, pushing them even further to advance in their respective fields,” she added.
Her exceptional son told Digital Life he’s excited about the future as there are so many cool things people can do with technology, and he looks forward to being a part of it.
His dream is to have a career in computer science, where he plans to build more video games and applications.