At Stem Camp: Binary Coding, Cybersecurity, Programming

Gathered around a roadmap laid across the tiled classroom floor, children watched robotic cars navigate the twists and turns of a street. With one final day to perfect their codes, the young computer programmers analyzed every command to drive forward, turn and reverse.

Gathered around a roadmap laid across the tiled classroom floor, children watched robotic cars navigate the twists and turns of a street. With one final day to perfect their codes, the young computer programmers analyzed every command to drive forward, turn and reverse.

“I’ve really liked learning how to program robots. I like working as a team. When we mess up, we work together to fix it and find a solution,” said 11-year-old Quiyah Harris, of team QTSSS.

Harris and 29 other rising sixth-graders will present the science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills they learned during Decatur-Morgan County Minority Development Association’s inaugural STEM Camp at West Decatur Elementary.

“One of the passions I have is to make sure our minority students have exposure to some of the things that I had exposure to. They have to see what is possible and experience it,” said Claudette Owens, who holds a doctorate in physics and retired in February as director of the Space and Missile Defense Command’s Future Warfare Center Operations Directorate.

Partnering with Murphy Brown, president of the Minority Development Association, Owens’ passion came to life.

Over the past three weeks, Decatur City Schools’ students, many from underserved areas, learned about binary coding, cybersecurity, budgeting and computer programming. They built lunar rovers out of found materials, programmed robots, learned from scientists, engineers, physicists and college math professors and visited NASA, the Robotics Center and GE.