2019 After School Computer Science Program
Insights has partnered with Montana Vista Elementary School, Horizon Middle School, IDEA Mesa Hills & IDEA Edgemere to take part in Season 2 of our After School Computer Science Program. Thanks to support from Microsoft Digital Skills, Microsoft TechSpark, and Technovation Families we will bring hands-on artificial intelligence (AI) learning to children and their families.
Technovation Families is a global initiative to support families learning artificial intelligence (AI) together. Schools, mentors, and families will come together by completing ten different training and design challenges using everyday materials like cardboard, paper clips, and batteries. These lessons will cover concepts in circuitry, inventive design process, and computer science skills to guide students and families to develop their inventions that use AI to solve problems in their community.
Families are encouraged to plan, design, and submit a capstone project solving a real-world problem in their community to a global competition! Submission to competition is not required to participate in the program. Parents or other guardians are asked to attend the after school session with their student(s) and engage in the lessons.
Why AI? The World Economic Forum estimates that 65 percent of children entering primary school today will work in jobs that don’t exist yet. Through this program we aim to demystify AI for students and families by providing early and approachable introductions to AI technology that is reshaping the workforce.
Season 2 of Technovation Families included fun lessons on:
- Becoming an AI expert
- Creating a pattern-finder AI agent
- Strengthening an AI agent with data
- Competing to train your ML agent
- Brainstorming your AI invention
- Planning your AI invention
- Becoming an expert for your plan
- Building your AI invention
- Pitching your invention
- Preparing to submit
Students then attended 4 lessons developed by our staff with funding provided by Microsoft Techspark:
- mBots robotics and coding part 1
- mBots robotics and coding part 2
- Drones and programming
- Snap circuits & computer science
This after school program concluded in January 2020.
We would like to send a special thank you to the teachers and educator corps members who took the time to spend with students each week after school and facilitated these sessions for eager and excited students.
Check out the fun we had after school!