Middle School Summer Virtual Java Camp
2020
Hosted through Team 4639, The RoboSpartans, The Middle School Summer Java Virtual Camp was a fundraiser hosted in our community to teach kids about AP Computer Science A and introduce them to very important CS topics such as syntax and data structures. We inspired many students to start learning to program and gave them free resources on how to learn more on their own past the camp. Overall, we raised over $5000 from this camp for our club.
Pandemic Troubles
As our outreach program prospered and started to develop, we were struck with the problem of having to work remotely in midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, also because of this, we were not sure of our sponsor retention due to the economic troubles of the oil and gas industry at the time as well. Because of this, we had to construct a new plan to raise money, pivoting to the more affordable, more widespread virtual program that would avoid physical contact with anybody. Not only was very successful, but it really opened our eyes to the possibility of online learning.
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We hosted two sessions for this camp spanning four days for a total of one week each. We also provided scholarships or free admission for students that were going through economic hardship with the economic troubles in the community. This was one way of showing how strong our team communication was despite not being able to meet in person to plan.
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From parent reviews and student feedback, everyone absolutely loved the camp and we hope to host events similar to this in the future.
Surprise NASA Engineers Visit
We even surprised the students with four real NASA engineers that came on the last day to talk to the students about the applications of programming and what kind of projects they work on with the knowledge that they gained. They talked about everything from what they do on a daily basis, current NASA projects, opportunities for the students, and even a Question and Answer session.
