By Barb Ericson
In the fall of 2009 Georgia Tech started a high school weekend computing program. We asked for teacher recommendations for students with at least a B average that have had some computing experience. We weren’t looking for the students who already love computers and programming and intend to major in computer science at Georgia Tech. Our goal was to see if additional exposure to computing would entice more high school students to consider computing careers. We especially wanted to attract a more diverse group of students to computing.
We selected 22 students from 16 schools out of 90 applicants. We selected 11 females and 11 males. The group consists of 13 African Americans, 1 Hispanic, 1 Multi-racial, 4 Caucasians, and 2 Asians. There are 12 seniors, 6 juniors, and 4 sophomores. Only 5 of the 22 students expressed an interest in computing as a career at the beginning of the program. We administered an attitude pre-survey at the beginning of the program. We will administer a post-survey at the end of the school year.
The group attends training in computing at Georgia Tech on Sundays from 1 pm to 5pm followed by a dinner. This fall they were trained on: PicoCrickets, LEGO NXT robots, Scratch, Alice, and Pleo robots. The high school students assist in our computing outreach efforts. Some students work our weekend Girl Scouts or Cool Girls workshops. The students are paid $8.00 an hour for both attending training and helping with our outreach programs. Students can also do outreach in their local community and can develop tutorials. Some of the students are helping local FIRST LEGO League teams.
We have had 2 students leave the program. One moved away and one couldn’t make the Sunday training sessions. We have already had 6 of the students apply to Georgia Tech with a declared major of computer science or computational media. Some of these were not originally considering a career in computing. We have also seen an increased interest in our lending library of LEGO NXT robts, PicoCrickets, and Pleo robots from teachers who have students in the high school program.
We will be doing a more formal evaluation of the program. But, we are excited about the preliminary results. This program was funded by our National Science Foundation Broadening Participation in Computing grant. The cost of this program for fall 2009 was approximately $10,000 in payments to the high school students.
Barb Ericson
CSTA Board of Directors