$250,000 Partnership Seeks to Build Kids’ Tech Skills in Summer Program

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | Source: Capital Gains

A one-week tech camp scheduled for June hopes to capture the spirit of a movement in Lansing to prepare students for a changing workplace.

The camp will be fun and innovative, helping Lansing middle school students “check under the hood” of computers while learning math and science skills.

“We’re hoping to excite tomorrow’s engineers and scientists, and to take them to the next level of preparing for jobs that are crying for skilled applicants,” says Kirk Riley, of the Information Technology Empowerment Center (ITEC), an independent non-profit organization.

Funded with a five-year, $250,000 TechSmith Corp. grant, the camp will be held at Impression 5 Science Center (I-5) in Downtown Lansing. Other camps, courses and exhibits will follow in the new collaboration.

The first two camps (the second is in August) will bring in HOPE Scholars, Lansing School District middle school students selected for nurturing who on completion of high school receive two years of education at Lansing Community College (LCC).

Games in the summer camps will include geocaching, in which people use global positioning systems (GPS) to hunt for treasure.

“In this case, there will be a nice big reward, still to be determined,” Riley laughs.

The students will measure the quality of the water in the Grand River and help develop a permanent exhibit at the science center. They’ll also make robots, using Lego Robotics kits. And they will make their own cartoons using a computer program called Scratch.

Impression 5 is already a wireless hotspot. The new partnership will allow I-5 to purchase multiple laptop computers and software to enable the students to use digital media, says Erik Larson, director.

ITEC, founded in 2007, offers after-school classes in Lansing-area schools and at area non-profits. In September, it expects to move into its new home in the former Holmes Street School.