#Code_IT Camp for Middle School students

hosted by Del Mar College

During the summer of 2022, twenty (20) middle school aged students spent the week (July 18-22) learning the principles of computer science during the fourth annual #Code_IT Camp funded by the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) to keep the state globally competitive in a high-tech world. Developed as a team-building experience, the #Code_IT Camp offers several levels of coding curriculum focused on spatial reasoning and computer programming, logic-based programming and text-based coding for drones. Campers are exposed to design logic, computational thinking and language scripting for robots.

Participants engaged in eight hours of classroom instruction and performed 32 hours of hands-on activities using four types of robots. The first two days, campers learned programming and built robots––including Sphero Bolt Robots and mBOT Smart Cars. Wednesday’s daylong activity introduced the 20 youth to building, programming and flying drones. The campers also interacted with about 20 TAMU-CC CBI graduate and undergraduate researchers learning about lidar, artificial intelligence research conducted as part of the AI2ES.org NSF Institute, and how these students progressed from middle school to being on their way to earning a STEM college degree. The Collegiate High School Robotics Team, who are the statewide competition champions this year, taught, demonstrated and conducted fun robotics exercises with the campers on their fourth day of activities. The #Code_IT Camp culminated on day five (5) with bottle rockets and fun competition among teams.