100 Black Men of Chicago Presents: IT/STEM Mentoring Program
from Saturday, August 18, 2018 9:30AM to Saturday, October 6, 2018 12:30PM
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Identified Community Concern: African American young men and women, residing in underserved and under-resourced communities, lack the exposure, encouragement, and resources to acquire Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematic (STEM) field education. They also lack the preparation and necessary skills to compete for the vast number of lucrative career opportunities available to those with STEM related backgrounds. 100 Black Men of Chicago, Inc.’s Objective: To expose participants to Information Technology (IT) field education, application coding, and technology problem solving. Prepare applicants with a knowledge foundation; motivate and encourage them to pursue further academic and hands-on enrichment at the high school and post-secondary level. The overarching goal is to impart participants with the necessary tools, skill sets, confidence, and drive to compete for the vast number of lucrative opportunities which exist within the IT sector; the largest employment growth area for this generation of youth. Additionally, the 100BMC will seek to identify and forge relationships with organizations and field experts who are capable of providing hands-on IT related experiences for our participants. Robotics expositions, scientific lab presentations/competitions are examples where students can be directly mentored by experts who are practicing in the field. Program Overview: Invite students interested in IT and learning about the vast number of opportunities within the sector; excited to work on gaining the knowledge and skills to pursue a career in IT; interested in interacting with experts in the field; exploring IT incubators as well as companies to enhance learning. Multi-Session – IT/STEM MENTORING PROGRAM – Proposes Subject Matter Offering: Program Overview & Introduction to IT: Students will be presented with an overview of the Program, as well as administered a pre-test to assess their initial familiarity and understanding of IT. The initial session will touch on the importance of IT in the economy, as well as the abundance of careers within Information Technology. Hands on Computer Learning: Students will be introduced to assembling the fundamental components of a computer, connecting to the internet, and programming. The Internet Defined: Students will be introduced to and develop a functional understanding of network topology, and transition to web pages. Online Safety: Students will engage in exercises and discussions placing emphasis on best practices to ensure safety while operating and performing monetary transactions online. Students will also learn to recognize such safety features as the difference between “http” and “https”. Math and the Digital World: Students will learn communication through encoding and conversions. Students will begin with the binary number system of computers, then transition to the language of humans. Data & Big Data: Students will learn the meaning of data and big data, as well as examine the difference. Students will also be exposed to the way data is shown, as well as the select uses of data. The importance of big data will be discussed and analyzed, along with its relevance to math, and computers. Coding (E.g., Java; Python): Students will be introduced to, and be taught a functional understanding of programming with one or both of the coding languages. Application Development & Coding: Students will be tasked with writing basic applications using the coding languages taught, then gradually progress to writing more complex applications. Gaming & Game Programming: A series of mini-workshops that will incorporate programming, animation, creative writing, art, and music composition. Cyber Security: Along with and introduction to the field, the session would include an exercise simulating a Corporate Security Breach; part of the crisis resolution would be to research and perform an analysis on the cause of the breach to determine which IT related professions would be called upon to address the security issue. Robotics: Session exercises would teach the fundamentals of programming by “programming” humans to build structures. Website Development: Students will be introduced to the fundamentals of and tasks associated with developing websites. The process will include the fundamentals of web design, web content development, and network security configuration.
University Of Illinois, at Chicago (UIC)
802 S. Halsted St. Chicago IL USType: Eventbrite