Seeing a group of teenagers hunched over smartphones is nothing out of the ordinary. This summer, in the STEM Discovery Lab at UNH Manchester, 14 New Hampshire high school students, whose eyes were fixated to their screens, were doing something extraordinary- using computer science to build their own mobile applications.
Dave Dewitt, CEO & Founder of Phase65, Inc. attended the first day of the camp as a manufacturing industry partner. "As a 67 year old retired mechanical engineer I am well aware of how important STEM is to bridging the growing 'Skills Gap' of our K-12 student population. I'm reasonably good with technology but had no idea how apps were developed so I decided to join one of the student/teacher groups to get some first-hand experience," said Dewitt. "I got a bit hung up and asked for some help. The students quickly got me back on track and soon my phone app displayed the correct water reservoir scene that gurgled and vibrated when you swipe across the screen with a finger."
The Ecosystem Computing Challenge (ECC) Summer Camp, led by Mihaela Sabin, Associate Professor of Computer Science in the Computing Technology Program at UNH Manchester, the university’s urban campus, took place during the last week of July. Students were introduced to computer science using the App Inventor programming environment. The first three days of the camp served as an introduction to App Inventor and students were able to explore and create their own mobile phone apps.
This was also a professional development opportunity for teachers from the Manchester School of Technology, Pinkerton Academy, Timberlane Regional, and Dover High School who participated in the camp to observe students learn and coach them as they worked on their team projects.
“The 8-day ECC Professional Development Institute focused on computational thinking, inquiry, and equitable teaching practices to engage students with the content and improve their attitudes and confidence towards computing,” said Sabin.
The teachers experienced first hand how to introduce computer science and programming material to students in preparation to teach their own courses in the fall at their respective schools. “The ECC summer camp is a great opportunity for teachers and teenagers! During camp, I was able to try new techniques to make computer science more appealing to teenagers from a variety of backgrounds,” said Jo-Ann Albert a teacher from Timberlake Regional High School.
A research scientist from UNH Cooperative Extension spoke to students about current water resource concerns and how an app could be used by experts or citizen scientists to help in the gathering of data. “Presenting the students with a variety of real-world topics to direct their work is a great way to simulate the way in which real app developers work. I had many interesting conversations with the students about how their apps could be used to either complement current work in these areas or provide a compelling, brand-new approach. I have little doubt that some of the apps students were considering could and would be used tomorrow by professionals in the field,” says Shane Bradt, Associate Extension Specialist in Geospatial Technologies at UNH Cooperative Extension.
One of the goals of the camp and part of the ECC is to produce project-based and socially-relevant computing curriculum to teach diverse learners at the high school level computational practices by engaging them in solving ecosystem challenges with mobile apps for Android devices. All student groups successfully created apps to address their topic area and finished the week by presenting a poster of their work to fellow campers, staff, family and friends.
“The walls were lined with a rainbow of sticky notes and presentation posters. Much like those I was used to seeing after engineering "think tank" sessions at the various manufacturing companies I have worked in. Each group presented very well planned and implemented apps that could be used by researchers to collect environmental data that would then be used to address a local sustainability concern. Each student team presented the process by which they developed their app, how it functioned on the phone and how it would be used by environmentalists. The presentations were conducted in a fashion similar to those used by engineering school project teams,” Said Dewitt.
This camp was part of a larger project called the “Ecosystem Computing Challenge” (ECC), a partnership model to build access to relevant computing education for underrepresented high school students. ECC provides a multi-layered, iterative approach to curriculum and teacher professional development that aims to expand the states capacity to deliver an uncompromised vision of computing education to a diverse population, in both in- and out-of-school settings.
This project is part of a five-year grant awarded to the University of New Hampshire from the National Science Foundation EPSCoR program to develop a pilot project for students in the state’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) centers.
