I worked with the youth ministry at Greater Centennial AME Zion Church to coordinate a first of many “Senior Connect” workshops. The goal was to have our youth take pride in being teachers and to build relationships between the elders in the community and our teens.

In the same room that our Teen Tech Bash is hosted in, we set up workstations for tablet and app help, cell phone set up, and computer support. The tech support was comprised of 10 teens who helped the seniors with everything from adding contacts to their phones, setting up kindles, adding itunes to ipads, and how to text.

It was an amazing time, with both the youth and elders asking when we will do it again. The goal is to host monthly drops-ins to help our elders stay connected and to foster community between our aged and youngins.

Last nights Teen Tech Bash was a little bit different from the past because we hosted only about 15 young people, due to lack of confirmed volunteers. However the intimate setting and reduced amount of youth  with a singular focus made for a fun time. We had the ability to talk about the internet and web-making in more depth as well as discuss domain names and creating a real presence online. We started by purchasing a domain name for every young person in attendance with hopes of them starting digital portfolios, blogs, etc.

The night ended with many of the youth building pages that reflected their favorite artists and sports athletes. We also had cool video embeds with the use of Popcorn Maker which was introduced to the youth by the Pop Squad

Last night I get a Facebook message from one of the youth that has attended several workshops asking me to come and talk about technology and my design career at his high school’s Career Day. I was fortunate enough to not have any appointments, so I met him at 7:30 at the school. The moment I enter, the first thing I see are 6 officers and a medal detector that he tells me I have to pass through. Honestly I couldn’t imagine starting every day like that. That being said I met some passionate, creative articulate young people.

The school is one of the schools that was broken into several schools. It used to have 3500-4000 students, now it is comprised of several schools within one “campus” The principal said they started out averaging 15 fights a day and now that has been reduced significantly, as their graduation rate has increased from roughly only about 10-15% of the class graduating per year.

All in all equipped with my ipad, and laptop I was able to talk design and technology, two of my favorite things. It was amazing watching them jot down notes, come up and share their drawings and ask questions. Many were excited learning how much info was available online, such as codeacademy, coursera, and opensource technologies like Gimp and Scratch. I am looking forward to seeing some of them at the upcoming Teen Tech Bash and in the future. Exposure Camp is adopting a few schools for the remainder of this year and next. I will definitely be adding this one to the list.

I exposed about 100 teens to new ideas and possibilities in tech. Today was a good day.

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We started the day by redesigning the game Rock, Paper Scissors to explore the five elements of game design using a physical game. They designed and renamed it Utensils, Utensils, Utensils

Great design concept and game

After breaking for pizza the EA team rolled in the place. Everybody was surprised to that four women rolled up in the place and the students were shocked and even made mentioned they were surprised to see all women.

EA addressing career paths within the game design industry and what they look for for hires and interns.

“Programmers in the industry are like Holywood stars” “You will never go hungry”

Careers in video game testing

EA addressing diversity within the industry and specifically their company at about 3:50

After discussion and Q&A EA shared video of the work life culture which made almost everybody want to work in the industry. Very similar to cool culture that many tech companies have.

You get a game and you get a game.. EA came “Oprah style” with a game for everyone

We rapped the day talking about the challenge and 6 people signed up to create a team and enter the challenge. So Exposure Camp will be sponsoring this team and a possible second with just over a month to create something. The crazy thing to me is how not one of the young people in attendance had even heard about the competition, so teacher, organization, after school program had made mention of it. This is unfortunate and means that many young people who spend inordinate amounts of time playing video games will miss out on an opportunity to creat what they love. Lets continue to spread the word about the challenge. If you know a young person or a group of young people interested in grades 5-12 let me know and we can do a few pop up workshops and get them on the path as well. email tina@exposurecamp.org or call/text 347.927.2163

I love that Code.org calls coding a “superpower” it is definitely a skill or tool that will allow your creativity to come to fruition and in many cases is large enough to change the world. They created a great video with dude from Twitter Jack Dorsey, dude from the NBA, Chris Bosch, dude from the Black Eyed Peas, Will.I.AM and other great creatives who have become game changers because they learned this crazy little skill of how to code. It’s powerful man.. get up on it!!