Middle School Girls Get A Lesson On Robotics At Drexel University
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Drexel's College of Computing and Informatics has hosted a week-long camp for middle school girls to learn how to build and program robots.
Robot Springboard Tech Camp is a week-long program designed to empower middle school girls and help them realize they can be successful in the tech field.
The camp was founded four years ago by two girls, Hannah and Rachel Tipperman, who are now attending Brown University. But they've passed the torch to two new high school students Sara Syed and Emily Yu.
"The goal I have for myself is really just to try to get the girls engaged and excited about technology, and for them to really realize they have potential and a career in this, and that they can do it in the future anything in stem and IT," Syed said. "I think a lot of times girls don't realize that they can be programmers and they can do robotics because its such a male dominated field."
"By the end of the week each group has chosen some kind of social problem in the world and how they're going to use technology to solve it," Yu said.
More than 25 girls from all over the city built and programmed robots using digital and analog sensors with the help of Drexel faculty and local industry experts.
Middle schooler Kenya Lucas is a big fan of the camp.
"I love building the robot especially, and then we learned how to program the robot and how to make it turn left and right and make it go though the mazes and we learned how to make the robot speak"
The camp is funded in part by a grant from the National Center for Woman & Information Technology and support from the College of Computing & Informatics and the College of Engineering.
