Mississauga students get together to build a city, a website and now a robot
Published August 24, 2022 at 4:56 pm
They’ve already built a “city” and a website from scratch, and conducted several engineering experiments.
And that’s just so far this week.
Tomorrow (Aug. 25), the group of 30 young girls from Mississauga, all in Grade 8, will put their minds together to build a robot.
As they prepare for high school, the students are attending a free, week-long GE Girls STEM-based Summer Camp hosted by GE Healthcare in Mississauga.
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs offer education in those four areas to kids of different ages, and Mississauga-based GE has signed on with the summer camp learning tool.
This week’s summer camp is being hosted in efforts to empower and encourage girls to pursue engineering education and careers, camp organizers say.
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Thursday’s session, GE Girls Build a Robot Day, runs from 1 to 3 p.m. at GE Healthcare. The participants will be equipped with the latest in technology to allow them to complete the project.
On Friday, the final day of camp, the girls will learn all about the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Minecraft and PowerApps.
They began the week on Monday by building a “practical city using electronic components and conductive ink.”
On Tuesday, they built a website from scratch using HTML and CSS.
Today (Aug. 24) was Let’s Talk Science day, where the campers conducted three different practical engineering-based experiments.
GE Volunteers, a global network that includes GE employees, hosted this week’s camp along with partners Canada Learning Code, Let’s Talk Science and Microsoft Canada.
“The camp aims to inspire girls to choose course selections in high school (math, physics, chemistry, computer science, etc.) that enable them to enter post-secondary engineering programs and ultimately pursue an engineering career,” camp organizers say.
A more specific goal of the program, organizers add, is to help in achieving “a more balanced engineering industry and support equitable hiring practices, specifically increasing female actively employed engineers to at least 30 per cent.”