NFMU's Tech Day Camp

4/16/2018

The Americas, Guyana, North Ruimveldt Multilateral Secondary School, Mandela Avenue, Georgetown, Guyana

The National Frequency Management Unit in collaboration with the University of Guyana held a two day tech camp at North Ruimveldt Secondary School as part of its annual Girls in ICT Day commemoration. The camp was conducted on the 16^th April, 2018 and 23^rd April, 2018. Each session lasted for 2 1/2 hours from 9:00 am to 11:30 pm. On the 16^th April, 2018 twenty students from 3^rd and 4^th from were present in the training. On the 23^rd April, 2018 three female students were present for the activities.

North Ruimveldt Secondary was selected for the tech camp because they were participants of the pilot Guyana Girls Can Code programming club in 2016 and were recipients of Raspberry Pi Starter Kits from the National Frequency Management Unit in 2017.

The camp focused on introducing students to basic programming using the Raspberry Pi. Students were familiarized to the programming using programming blocks with the Scratch programming language.

Students were exposed to activities using the Raspberry Pi which allowed them to program animated games, movies and story books.  Also the students were able to understand how small affordable devices such as the Raspberry Pi could work as a fully functional computer.

It was found that introducing students to programming using the Raspberry Pi was successful. The graphical nature of the Scratch interface intrigued students and sparked their graphical design curiosity.A brief introduction to the BBC Micro Bit was conducted and students were able to build a simple sensor light after this introduction.