The Boys and Girls Club of Fitchburg & Leominster is hosting a Geek Squad Academy from Best Buy. This two day program, for youth 10-18, will provide an opportunity for students to develop tech skills through hands-on experience with some of the newest and coolest technology. Local Best Buy employees help the students explore areas like:
Who: Youth ages 10-18, the Academy is not limited to those who live in the local area Where: Boys and Girls Club of Fitchburg & Leominster When: August 14 & 15th, 9 am - 3:30 pm Cost: Free Register here To keep up on STEM Happenings throughout New England follow: STEM Advocates at www.mySTEMresource.com and on Facebook and Twitter @STEMAdvocates
This looks like fun! Join MIT Beaver Works at their Racecar Crash Course 6-Week Coding Class for girls being held in Cambridge on Saturdays in November and December.
Who: High School Girls interested in learning coding and robots! When: Saturdays 10 am - 1 pm; Nov 3 - Dec 15 (excluding Thanksgiving week) Where: MIT Beaver Works, Cambridge, MA Cost: Free Register here To keep up on STEM Happenings throughout New England follow: STEM Advocates at www.mySTEMresource.com and on Facebook and Twitter @STEMAdvocates Becker College, named #4 in the world by Princeton Review for Game Design, is again offering a free summer day camp to help attract girls into STEM/STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) fields at their Worcester Campus. The program, for girls in grades 7-12, will focus on a hands-on introduction to game programming and design. Each student will be given a mobile device which they will use to create a finished game. All classes are taught by Becker's Game Design faculty.
Who: Girls in Grades 7-12 When: June 26-30 Where: Becker College Worcester Campus Cost: Free For more information and to register contact [email protected]. If you don't qualify for this experience but are interested in other opportunties, Becker College also offers a two-week residential Summer Game Studio program for both male and female high school students. My son attended this a few years ago and had said it was the best experience of his life! To keep up on STEM Happenings throughout New England follow: STEM Advocates at www.mySTEMresource.com and on Facebook and Twitter @STEMAdvocates Do you know or are you a high school student, ages 13-18, interested in learning about new technology, participating in workshops and working with experts with industry professionals from companies like Microsoft, Google, and Red Hat? If so, check out MetroHacks III, the largest high school hackathon in New England, being held May 19-20, 2018 at the Harvard SOCH in Cambridge. No coding experience required! The event is free and meals are provided.
Click here to register. To keep up on STEM Happenings throughout New England follow: STEM Advocates at www.mySTEMresource.com and on Facebook and Twitter @STEMAdvocates MIT Society of Women Engineers is hosting a free Python Workshop for high school students who are interested in learning how to code. The program encourages females to sign up but is open to all genders. Date: Saturday, March 10 Time: 9 am - 3 pm Cost: Free Registration Deadline: Sunday, March 4, register here To keep up on STEM Happenings throughout New England follow: STEM Advocates at www.mySTEMresource.com and on Facebook and Twitter @STEMAdvocates What is a high schooler to do in the middle of winter in New England? They can spend the weekend attending Blueprint, a free high school hackathon being held Feb 17 & 18th at MIT. On Saturday, students get to participate in hands-on workshops on programming and iOS development taught by MIT students and others in the industry. On Sunday, they get to work in a team to build a project from scratch with support from mentors (my son participated last year and said their mentors were very helpful in answering questions).
Guest Speaker: Andrew Sutherland, the founder and CTO of Quizlet; featured twice in Forbes Magizine's 30 under 30 list for Education A free t-shirt and meals are provided. Click here to register - Registration ends Saturday, Jan 27th To keep up on STEM Happenings throughout New England follow: STEM Advocates at www.mySTEMresource.com and on Facebook and Twitter @STEMAdvocates Are you or do you know a young female high school student, currently in the 11th grade, interested in technology? MIT Women's Technology program offers a four week residential academic experience, designed and taught by female MIT graduate students, exploring engineering through hands-on classes, labs and team-based projects. This program is geared towards students with no prior programming background.
This program is free of charge for families with incomes less than $120,000 and $3,500 for families earning more than $120,000. The program includes classes, housing and food. This is a competitive application process with over 500 applications for 40 spots. To learn more watch their YouTube Video or go to their website Program Dates: June 23 - July 21, 2018 Application Deadline: January 15, 2018 Girls Who Code is a national non-profit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology. In 1984, 37% of all computer science graduates were women, now that number is just 18%. Girls Who Code helps prepare girls around the country for a future in computer science with free after school programs for 6-12th grade girls.
Find a location near you or start your own club! If you live near Worcester, MA, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) is running a club for girls in grades 7 and 8. Dates: September 5 - December 19, 2017 (excluding November 21, 2017) Hours: Tuesdays, 4:00 - 6:00pm Cost: free Registration: Opens On Monday, August 14, 2017 at 9:00am To register, contact the Office of Pre-collegiate Outreach Programs by email at [email protected] or by phone at 508-831-4900. Registration is now open for CODEIT!, a free program offered by MIT students aimed at decreasing the gender-gap in technology. Middle school girls with little or no programming experience will have the chance to explore computer science through interactive workshops and MIT student mentors. The program meets weekly on Saturday afternoons from 11 a.m. - 3 p.m. beginning October 7, 2017 through December 2, 2017 (students are expected to attend all classes). Computers and smartphones will be available for student use and a catered lunch will be provided.
The media room at the Leominster Public Library exploded with excitement and chatter on Wednesday, February 22, 2017, when Thi Sarkis of the Rhode Island Computer Museum encouraged children to summon the Ender Dragon. Seventeen boys and girls, between the ages of eight and twelve, participated in a free two hour Coding with Minecraft Workshop where they were introduced to coding concepts using JavaScript. Minecraft is a wildly popular sandbox game, where players can create, explore and customize their own virtual worlds using building blocks.
Laptops were provided for use to each participant, many of which had no prior experience with Minecraft or coding. Students sat at tables in groups of four and were able to connect and play together on a secure server. Looking around the room you could see custom built houses, forts, castles, and skyscrapers. The kids learned how to change the weather to make it rain, to build giant rainbows and how to summon lightning bolts with a bow and arrow. The kids didn’t realize they were building on their creativity, collaboration and problem solving skills, they just knew they were having lots of fun. To keep up on STEM Happenings throughout New England follow STEM Advocates at www.mySTEMresource.com and on Facebook and Twitter @STEMAdvocates It doesn't seem like much time goes by before I find another cool thing that MIT has to offer the community. Last night, I stumbled across the MIT App Inventor, which is free open source software. It is designed to encourage all people, especially young people, to become creators of technology through the use of drag and drop programming. The website offers a Getting Started Guide, Tutorials, curriculum and teaching resources for teachers, and active community forums. I watched the Ball Bounce Tutorial and created my first app! So, what are you waiting for? Why not get started today? Create something really cool and maybe you will be featured on the website's App of the Month! This is a true love story where the love continues to grow stronger. The story goes back to the beginning of time, or at least my time. In the 1960s, down the halls of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) campus there was a young woman that caught the fancy of a young man. My mother had been working as a secretary in the admissions office and my father also worked on campus. They fell in love and soon married and had two beautiful daughters.
Fast forward about 40 years to 2012, MIT came into our lives when my niece was accepted into their freshman class. This coincided with my oldest son reaching his middle school years. We learned about the SPARK program; this is where the love story really begins. SPARK is a program where middle school kids get to spend the weekend at the MIT campus taking classes on anything and everything. The kids that attend SPARK are made of the same cloth, they are excited to be there because they love being challenged and they love learning. After MIT SPARK came MIT Junction, which is a summer program for select, advanced, self-driven high school students held on the MIT campus for two weeks. Students submit a proposal for an independent study project and those whom are selected are invited to the MIT campus to carry out their project with the support of a knowledgeable student mentor. The students are also able to take college-level hands-on seminars on a variety of topics. My son was lucky enough to be able to participate in this opportunity in 2015. SCRATCH, is part of the curriculum in both my son’s schools, one in elementary and one in high school. It is a free programming language, developed at MIT, where students can build and share stories, games and animations. It can be used as an introduction to programming and logic and can be used at higher levels for more advanced projects. When students are in high school, they are able to attend SPLASH, which is held the weekend before Thanksgiving on the MIT Campus. The program is two days of classes on just about everything. Students, not parents, pick the classes that interest them such as Parody Song Writing, Knitting, Cyberespionage, and Introduction to Ancient Greek. The vibe of the campus is almost electric where you can feel the energy and creativity. It is an incubator of ideas. Oh, if you have a friend, or cousin in our case, that attends MIT stay in the dorms for the full college experience. There are many more reasons we love MIT, but those will be for another post…. |
AuthorWelcome! I'm Debbi and I'm so glad you're here! As a mom of two boys I found it difficult to find resources on STEM programs for my kids. I spent hours researching which resulted in my kids having some amazing STEM opportunities. I want to share information with other families. I try to focus on free or low-cost events so that opportunities are available to children no matter their family's income level. Archives
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