Education

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.

This last December, we at Bio::Neos had the opportunity to participate in Computer Science Education Week for the second straight year and it was just as energizing as the first! Last year, everyone in the office signed up as volunteers on Code.org, but only I was engaged to volunteer at schools that were requesting help. This year... we decided to be a bit more proactive in our support.

I had the opportunity to judge at the Midwest Big Data Hackathon hosted by the University of Iowa this past weekend. The event was open to all students and it was awesome seeing people that had experience in different fields, students and volunteers alike. I saw students from a couple years from graduating with the Bachelors degree to students that were just shy of getting their PhD.

A couple weeks back, Michael and I volunteered for an event at the Coralville Library organized by Erica Binegar and called "On Your Mark! Get Set! Code!". It was a one hour class in which kids of 5th/6th graders of any ability level or previous experience were invited to the library to pair program for 1 hour under the guidance of a group of professional mentors (Including us there was Trish Ball from Continuity).

This year, the week of December 7th to 13th has been declared Computer Science Education Week. This is an annual program organized through a grassroots effort by code.org and volunteers / partners. This program has been run since 2009, but this is the first year that Bio::Neos has been involved in the effort... and it was awesome!

Today I was given the opportunity to speak to a roomful of about a hundred 8th through 12th graders that were interested in learning more about IT career possibilities, and get some hands-on experience with a real-world implementation of various technologies in a lab setting at the Kirkwood High Tech Guys Day. It was a great event! Thanks for the opportunity to share my experience and why I think there is a technology-related career for anyone that is interested in pursuing that route.

Yesterday, Bio::Neos hosted a high school career exploration day, an event organized by myself and Kirkwood Workplace Learning Connection called "ExploreIT Day".