Increasing the Interest of Elementary Age Students in the Computing Sciences Though Day Camps
Daniel Cliburn, Tracey Weisheit, Jason Griffith, Matt Jones, Hunter Rackley, Eric Richey & Kevin Stormer, Hanover College
A great way to inspire technological change is to expose children (particularly those at the elementary school level) to computing topics. While it is true that many children are “computer literate”, their knowledge of topics actually relating to the computing sciences is often limited. In an effort to increase interest in the computing sciences, we recently organized a two-day workshop for local elementary school children. Each day, the children participated in two 3-hour courses on the following topics: Robotics, Computer Hardware, Virtual Reality, and Web Programming.
Our session will consist of an explanation of the motivation for these types of workshops, and the details of our curriculum for each course. We will describe how we advertised, and provide suggestions for implementing similar camps, in various formats, at other institutions. We also have several ideas for improving the workshops for campers and staff alike, which we will share.
