Youth at Alaskan Science and Engineering Camp Thrive with Tech Donations
Science and Engineering Experience Kamp (SEEK) Alaska aims to pique the interest of young people to explore these fields. Now in its 10th year, SEEK offers middle-school students a summer academic camp at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Here students engage in academic research, use software and hardware tools, make scientific predictions, test them with hands-on experiments, practice problem solving, and participate in leadership activities. SEEK inspires students to explore math, science, and engineering by combining a challenging environment with a fun one.
However, in order for its students to have the most professional and thorough experience, they also need the best technology. Each student is issued a notebook computer installed with Microsoft software. Thanks to software received through TechSoup, SEEK was able to offer a software-intense program that pushes participants' studies to college level.
Due to Microsoft software's ease of use, students find it fun to learn. Most of the students have no previous experience using spreadsheets. They leave the camp with not only skills in Excel, but also the understanding that scientific experiments use computational tools.
Thanks to the interchangeability of Microsoft software, students also learn how to integrate software tools to exchange scientific data and produce tables, equations, graphs, and figures. Students are able to craft their final products like artists including bold colors, videos, and sounds.
In addition, by creating a professional proposal using Microsoft software, SEEK was awarded a 2009 community grant for scholarships for students from Seward and Moose Pass, Alaska. This scholarship grant has allowed SEEK to make a positive impact on students from more rural areas.
