A Focus on Youth camp focused on digital technology is building STEM knowledge for elementary students.

Made possible through a Ministry of Education grant, the Focus on Youth summer camps are offered free of charge to over 300 elementary students in the HWCDSB and employ approximately 50 high school students. The camps were created to provide high quality summer program opportunities for children and youth in identified HWCDSB neighbourhoods.

Over the course of 6 weeks, beginning July 4, 19 camps are offered to suit a variety of interest levels.

Under the direction of site supervisors Lucia Marchionda, Tia Cappella and Aron Fortino, the Virtual Venture Camp allowed students in grades 3 to 8 to explore coding, Claymation and other technologies that many have never used before.

“Throughout the week-long program, students created their own 1–2-minute Claymation movie using the stop motion app,” said Fortino.

“They made little characters, figurines and various movie backgrounds. They learned how to create a movie/scene board and develop a story line within their movie in collaborative groups.”

Students also coded with SPHERO balls, and most interestingly, noted Marchionda, created mini ‘villages’ from scratch to code their Blue Bot robots.

“Overall, the teachable focuses were arts and technology throughout the camp – with various transferable skills including creativity, teamwork, and imagination,” said Marchionda.