Thursday, June 17, 2010

Girl Tech camp teaches middle school girls hands-on lessons



The University of Illinois Springfield Computer Science Department is hosting a two day camp designed to teach middle school girls all about technology. It’s the second year for the Girl Tech event, which brings dozens of girls to the UIS campus.

“The research in the field indicates the number of young women going into computer science as a profession is dropping,” said Mary Sheila Tracy, Girl Tech camp director.

The camp was started as a local effort to turn the trend around and get girls interested in programming, robotics, computer hardware and much more.

“I think it’s really cool, because you learn about all this technology and it’s like really fun and exciting,” said Emily, a 7th grader taking part in the camp.

Participants used technology to create 3D animated stories, program robots, create digital movies and used computers to design their own hi-tech camp T-shirts to take home.

“It’s pretty much the most I’ve learned all summer and they don’t make it boring. You’re learning about a lot of stuff in a fun way, so it’s way better than school,” said Kassie, a 7th grader, who has participated in the program for two years.

This year, Girl Tech is also featuring mini-sessions on a variety of “hot” computer-related topics. Some of the topics being explored include computer intelligence, creating virtual avatars, cyber safety in social networking and controlling the behavior of artificial life forms.

Read our previous news release on Girl Tech

1 comment:

Pamela M. Salela said...

Kudos to Mary Sheila Tracy and the Computer Science Dept. for supporting this!