HS Outreach

This is a page for planning the ISTA outreach program to area High Schools. Right now, this is on hold indefinitely, mostly due to lack of people to help with it. Please contact me if you are interested in helping.

Goals

why are we doing this?

• to provide access to exciting ideas in AI to local students (see #Finding a school)
• to introduce the community to ISTA
  • to partner with other organizations sharing our goals (e.g., student enthusiast clubs, nonprofits)
• contribute what we develop as potential curriculum to be taught at area High Schools (via this wiki, maybe)

Finding a school

we can probably only make room for 1 - 2 schools per semester, so we need to decide what's important in how we choose our school(s)

• coursework/extracurriculars related to programming/robotics
• are there participants who could especially benefit from the exposure?
  • low socioeconomic status, underrepresented populations (sex, ethnicity), gifted, highly motivated, creative, some combination of these

Info. on Area High Schools

post information relevant to what is listed in #Finding a school here

• Tucson HS

• University HS/Rincon HS
  • AP Computer Science

• Desert View HS
• Saguaro HS
• CDO HS
• Amphi HS
• Sabino HS
• Basis HS

• Sunnyside HS
  • Title 1 school (source
  • promotes itself as "tech savvy" (source) has "one-to-one computing initiative" (source)
  • has Information/Computer Technology club (source), other computer clubs

• Catalina HS
  • Title 1 school (source)
  • no AP CS course, but JTED in CS-related subjects, and Robotics club (source)

• Catalina Foothills HS
• Salpointe Catholic HS
  • Robotics club

• Palo Verde HS
  • Engineering magnet
  • Competitive robotics club (source: Asst. Principle Jen Miller)

Info. on Area Middle Schols

• St. Gregory
  • competitive Robotics club (source: St. Gregory parent)

Activities / Lack of Activities

we need to consider how much structure we want during these hours

• use the existing AIMA framework to get things started?
• some kind of competition they could work towards?
• transition to an open hack environment?
  • first, get ROS installed
  • next, work with wubble2 simulator on a predefined project
  • next, run it on the robot
  • finally, have permissions to do some open hacking

Time / Scheduling

how much time per week can we spend on this

• who (among us) is involved?
  • at least one Spanish speaker
• what would be the best day/time?
• how long would we need to prep. for this?
• when we give tours, could we ask the organizer to bring information useful to #Finding a school?
• is there anything special we need to do if high schoolers will be here?

Next steps

what are we planning to do next

• email Clay to check out the project!
• get information about all the schools in #Info. on Area High Schools