The Northern Illinois University STEM Outreach program recently gathered grade schoolers to get them engaged with robotics and programming. They also got a chance to see what their future could hold in larger scale civic hacking.
On the second floor of NIU’s Holmes Student Center, several grade schoolers were huddled around laptops, getting one of their first forays into the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields. Their guide was Sam Watt, STEM Educator for the NIU STEM Outreach program.
“We did a lot about programming and coding, both offline and online,” Watt explained, “meaning it was just hands-on activities with engineering as well as actual robots and programming.”
For example, they programmed an educational robot nicknamed a “finch” to dance, sing, and navigate a maze.
But the big challenge was going on just below them.
Downstairs at the student center was the annual Huskie Hack — a 24-hour event open to students from middle schoolers to college. It was hosted by NIU and organized by “Hack Mom” Tracy Rogers-Tryba, an Outreach and Engagement specialist at NIU. Groups tackled several challenges based on health and wellness, this year’s event theme.
Wanting to see some of the action, Watt took his group of kids down to the big show.
On the event floor, a bustling crowd of busy volunteers and several sponsors jumped from table to table advising groups of local students. One such sponsor was David Frumkin, the Digital Transformation Architect for CDW.
“I’m here to discuss with the kids how to apply technology to solve problems,” Frumkin said. “Whatever they want to drive towards, I bring up a different lens.”
There was no shortage of bold problems faced by the attendees, like the one faced by Ryan Guan, a student from Naperville North High School, who wanted to tackle flooding.
“We’re going to try to program a flood avoidance program where, when there’s a flood occurring, or when there is going to be a flood occurring, we’re going to try to have an evacuation system for the members of the city,” Guan said.
Hernan Navita also participated in this year’s Hack. He says his group had to work on solutions for a variety of wellness issues.
“One of them is to code Alexa and have certain commands for Alexa so they can help Alzheimer’s patients and also dementia patients,” Navita explained. “The second one was to help the average student with the weight distribution of their backpacks, because their backpacks can be pretty heavy sometimes.”
“Hack Mom” Rogers-Tryba says the hack-a-thon plays a key role in engaging students with technology.
“These are all things that we can relate to,” she said. “That is key in getting students interested in really developing something. It’s 'see it, touch it, feel it.' They know somebody it resonates with.”
She says it’s about addressing needs that either haven’t been expressed yet or haven’t been addressed yet.
“[Like] looking at public health in crisis with what’s happened in Puerto Rico, Houston, and other entities that have been hit by flooding,” Rogers-Tryba said.
Organizers hope to keep the momentum going again next year, but challenges with state funding might result in changes to the event’s free-attendance policy.
And there’s always bound to be a few glitches along the way. When the Wi-Fi temporarily went down, a few programmers naturally got creative to pass the time and started a cup stacking competition.
Darius Dauzvardis is a graduate of WNIJ's Public Radio 101program.