Spring Break Classes @ The Tech Incubator
Over the course of this past Spring Break the Tech Incubator team had the opportunity to teach a variety of subjects here at Queens College. Classes taught varied from android development to basic programming systems such as scratch and raspberry pi.
Middle school students had the opportunity to sign up for this program back in January and the overall turnout was quite exciting for both the college and our team. Classes took place on a daily basis with many students passionately dedicating both their time and efforts to creating clear, cohesive material for the students. I had the opportunity to converse with a few of the students after the break and discuss their experiences with these classes:
Max White taught LEGO Robotics along with Farhan Zaman. He told me he was pretty anxious preparing for the camp because he worried it would be hard to keep the kids’ attention every day for the whole week, but it ended up going really well. They spent the first part of the week just learning what robots are, focusing on different key parts including sensors and motors, and doing some activities to introduce programming. “I think the kids’ favorite part was probably getting to build with the LEGOs (first following the instructions and then adding their own customizations), but some of them definitely got excited by the programming challenges, too”. By the end of the week the students were ready to design and build their own bots while Max and Farhan had a small talent show to show them off. “My favorite part was hearing all the different ideas the kids came up with for their final projects, which ranged from funny to impossible. Of the ideas that were actually completed”. The most memorable moment for Max was a dog brushing robot (complete with a stuffed dog model for the demo) and a dabbing robot that accompanied a music playing party bot. “I think the kids had a great time, and I hope they will be in math or computer class someday and think, ‘Hey, I remember learning this at Robotics camp!’”.
I also spoke with Sumaita Hussain who, during Spring Break, was a part of the group that taught Sonic + Raspberry Pi. Xiaochen taught Sonic Pi for the first hour, then she, along with her teammates would take the kids to the raspberry pi room and play with the devices. “It was a fun experience overall because I got to work with kids and learn a lot about them.” But it wasn’t all easy, Sumaita mentioned to me that one of the struggles was that the age range was too big, it was for kids from 11–14. The 13–14 year olds were a bit more advanced than the 11–12 year olds and because of this, their attention span was shorter. “Other than that, it’s awesome seeing how creative kids are and the stuff that they created was really cool!”.
On Monday, the team taught them how to put together a raspberry pi and broke down what each of the parts are. Then, on Tuesday, Muhammad Reza taught them how to make a webpage using HTML. Liza Luitova started teaching one of the students CSS! Afterwards when the students were brainstorming, Liza came up with the idea to teach them Ceaser Cipher which Sumaita mentioned to me “It was fun, but challenging because we asked the kids to get off their computers but they didn't want to”. The students ultimately decided on teaching them how to build a game using scratch. “We taught them the fundamentals of a pong game, and let them make it their own way! Some kids had multiple balls, some used sound effects, others created a score”. On Friday, the students all presented their work, which was, according to the team, “The most rewarding moment of all. They made some awesome projects with sonic pi, scratch, and html!”.
Due to the huge success of this project the teams have decided that they will continue on this role and offer these classes again (on a larger scale this time) in the summer! Go team TIQC!
