‘Intense’ Tech Camp Inspires STEM Students
When last we saw her, Deb Mishak, the DMPS Gifted and Talented Coordinator, was basking in the afterglow of last summer’s first-ever Tech Camp. Last Friday at the closing ceremonies of Tech Camp II it was clear that the glow goes on. In fact, it’s growing.
Tech Camp is an intense four-day experience that happens at Central Campus under the joint auspices of DMPS and Tech Journey, a nonprofit “aimed at inspiring young people to take an interest in technology by offering an engaging learning opportunity.”
Last week it connected 40 hand-picked students and a high-powered roster of local movers and shakers ranging from Ben Milne, CEO of Dwolla, the keynote speaker on Day One, to Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds and Suku Radia, CEO at Bankers Trust, each of whom delivered closing remarks on Friday.
Eighteen of the 22 8th graders who participated last summer as Tech Camp’s freshman class returned this year and were joined by a new cohort. “Of the four who didn’t return two had a conflict with their Science Bound summer activities and two have moved out of state,” explained Mishak, “so essentially everybody who could come back did. They couldn’t wait to do this again.”
And all forty will continue to be invited back as they advance through high school. Next summer a third cohort will be invited based on recommendations from district GT coordinators. Principal Financial Group donates the laptops that were at students’ disposal during camp and are kept as takeaways for use throughout the coming school year. Occasional Saturday get-togethers during the year between the campers and their technologist counselors will keep the experience fresh in their emerging, inquisitive minds.
Friday’s culmination was billed as a techno “Show and Tell” and didn’t disappoint. Following some speechmaking in the Central Campus auditorium the audience was escorted upstairs for demonstrations of what the campers had been up to all week. You half expected to be swatting at pesky drones buzzing you like mosquitoes. Maybe next year. In the meantime visitors were treated to techie tandems like Tumaini Mwangangi whose home high school will be Roosevelt, and Robert Nishimwe, who’ll be based at North, working the kinks out of their robotics programming. They and their peers had an alcove in the second-floor hallway looking like a dog park full of mini-bot puppies out for remote-controlled strolls. They tried to explain how they programmed their pup with software called Python but the gist got lost in translation. So they smiled sympathetically at the questioner groping for something his pad and pen could manage. Mwangangi and Nishimwe are bound for different home high schools but became pals and collaborators in shared classes at Central Academy.
Each of the four days of Tech Camp was broken into two three-hour learning blocks focused primarily on hands-on learning opportunities that included 3D printing, robotics, Google Glass, drones and GIS.
The need for technology workers continues to grow. According to Reynolds, there will be an additional 1.4 million STEM jobs available by 2020, 72,000 of them right here in Iowa. And those will be jobs that pay 26 per cent higher than non-STEM careers, on average.
Tech Journey, Inc. was formed to help students with limited resources pursue careers in technology and prepare to fill those jobs.
“You’ve been given a great gift,” Gary Scholten told the campers. Scholten is the Chief Information Officer at Principal Financial Group. “The way you give back is to stay engaged.”
That’s not going to be a problem.
If you’d like to know more about Tech Journey or volunteer to help with Tech Camp click here.
