We would love to learn more about the lesson activities and see some student artifacts! This sounds like an exciting project. How might we learn more about the lessons, the tool AMBY and the camp !

Thanks Kelly. We are planning on making the materials available once we revise them based on this summer's camp implementation. 

Thanks for your comments.  I agree that our students are enthusiastic and make great ambassadors for us!  Last year the campers developed spoken apps in Dialogflow on Google devices.  This had lots of challenges including the amount of typing that was required.  For this reason it was decided that an interface to make that hurdle easier was a big goal for this year. We have completed initial user testing on the new interface - including working with some of the campers.  We are hoping this new interface (AMBY - AI Made By You) will alleviate some past challenges and that this will help campers create more than one project of their own choosing. The goal is for them to have a positive experience to help with identity formation that could allow them to see themselves in CS in the future if they choose. I guess best case is that they could accomplish both, for I think that there is synergy between having a positive experience building something that will support developing your identity and thinking about your future. We look forward to letting you know the outcome after camp this summer. 

Thank you for taking the time to inquire. In our pilot year we started late and had to hustle to recruit campers (plus with covid and being an in-person camp it was very challenging) so we had a small cohort for the first year.  This year, we started recruiting earlier, and we did a number of things including creating flyers, talking with parents to gain insights, adding a website for applications and working with community outreach experts to help us get the word out.  Our graduate students did an outstanding job recruiting and we are really proud of their efforts.  We have pre/post assessments planned for gauging attitudes so stay tuned for updates as our research progresses.

Thanks for this question. You are right that it can be challenging recruiting campers who may not be aware of these types of opportunities and do not feel connected to STEM/CS education. In addition to the strategies that Joanne described above, we are also working with a community liaison and attending community events to get the word out.

Thanks for sharing, Joanne and Maya! Recruiting is, for sure, one of the challenges.

Thanks for asking. Overall, I think that it is a typical day camp with varied activities and snacks and lunch.  While we have curriculum we want to impart we try to do so in fun ways, adding lots of movement in the form of unplugged activities and some sports. One of the challenges is finding fun ways to do things, because it is an informal learning setting. This year we have plans to add more activities including some yoga and art. We introduce them to AI and CS as they develop their own spoken dialogue apps.  Our dev team has created a new interface for the campers to use Dialogflow with Google devices to hopefully eliminate some of the difficulty they had using Dialogflow directly last year. 

Hi Pauline, we have found that their Progression charts under the Guidelines which are grade banded have been really helpful.  They have recently released the one for Big Idea #4. Our learning objectives are still a work in progress, but our plan is to share them in the future.  We are also shifting our development of objectives to the creation of "I can" statements for our campers.  So for example an objective about analyzing training data becomes "I can make rules to classify data," will hopefully help us with scope.

What a great idea to include camper interviews, we will have to try to remember that for next year.  We hope to share our outcomes in the future and we are working on some papers and posters. I think we will have a lot more to share after the camp rolls out this summer.  Last year was our pilot year and we learned some things about the challenges campers had with typing, writing, and the need to get the wiggles out! The pilot year was a very small number, and we lost some to covid so not all that started could finish.  Fingers crossed that covid doesn't interfere with life anymore.