Education

On the weekend of July 12th I attended Startup Weekend IC, a startup competition held at Merge. The event had three stages. In the first stage, participants pitched their ideas to the crowd and attempted to win a popular vote for their ideas. The six most popular pitches were chosen to continue into the second round. I pitched an idea for self-assembling furniture, but sensing the idea was overly ambitious, was happy it did not go on to the second round.

Even though it's 9 months away it's never too early to start thinking about Computer Science Education Week!

I have an exciting announcement to note, although some of you have already seen a preview through an awkwardly-worded, auto-generated LinkedIn post that made it sound like I had suddenly moved on to a new job. Keep reading and I will explain in more detail:

We at Bio::Neos like to be involved with events that can promote computer science education within our local community and statewide. That's why I get so excited every year leading up to Computer Science Education Week.

Meeting students and helping them explore possible STEM careers is something that we at Bio::Neos believe is important both for their future, and the local community. Plus, I find it really enjoyable to interact with these inquisitive young students! In the last two weeks, I had two opportunities to engage with students wanting to learn more about different career paths...

I am excited to announce that this Fall semester of 2018, the Eastern Iowa IT Sector Board has been permitted to run our Scratch programming competition at North Central Junior High (in the Iowa City Community School District). This is the second semester in a row that NCJH has opened their doors to our organization and we are hoping this year will be bigger and better than the last.

After I participated in the Computer Science Education Work Group I was invited to take part in a Computer Science Standards Review Team. Both the Education Work Group and the Standards Review team were created at the direction of the Iowa Legislature.

On March 29th, Michael and I participated at the CCA 7th Grade STEM Day at Clear Creek Amana Middle School in Tiffin, IA organized by Workplace Learning Connection. The day involved guest speakers from all kinds of different science and technology backgrounds and we were responsible for the Information Technology session.

After we founded Bio::Neos in 2004 we received a lot of support from the University of Iowa and other organizations in the Iowa City community. Bio::Neos would not exist today without that initial support we had received from others, and as a result, we have made it a core value to engage in any opportunities that we encounter to give back through mentoring, volunteering, and advocating for all of the organizations in our local community.

As technology becomes more entrenched in our daily lives it is evident that coding will continue to be an in demand skill for some time to come.