The first-ever SPARK NC student tech showcase at Vance County Schools’ Center for Innovation provided a glimpse into what’s been going on in the world of coding, AI training and high-tech learning over the past few years.
Community leaders, business owners and others gathered together last week to see students demonstrate their projects, which included low-tech materials like Play-Doh and screwdrivers paired with computer code, joysticks and AI to produce creative sights and sounds.
As VCS Superintendent Dr. Cindy Bennett noted in her welcome to the showcase event, it’s this type of hands-on creativity that will fuel the next generation of careers, and these students will have an advantage in the “real world” because of the work they’re doing now. Work that looks an awful lot like fun.
It’s been three years since the SPARK lab was established in Vance County, one of the first 17 school districts to give this type of learning a whirl. Vance County is the first district, however, to offer this opportunity during the regular school day. Students come by bus to the lab for an elective class, but they can earn honor cords for graduation through their work with SPARK.
The students demonstrated their projects during a half hour or so of the afternoon’s activities. Davonte Yancey wrote code that he used to move a robot around.
Kaylee Morgan made a piano that makes music “by conducting energy from you to the computer…the energy makes the device work,” Morgan explained.
Another student created four different monsters who generate beat boxing sounds, pure entertainment that could extend to other real-life applications for music production.
He also did extensive research on Instagram, looking at product reviews and observing peers interact with the wildly popular app.
Overuse of the app can create stress, anxiety and even could be a source of cyberbullying, he said. He created a prototype that would improve the app, which he calls Instagram Safe Mode.
“It automatically blocks bullying on the app,” he said, in addition to reminding users to take breaks and placing limits on the number of scrolls a user can make.
Talk about real-world applications.
And it’s all being done in a SPARK NC lab in the Vance County Schools’ Center for Innovation.
