“The SVC CS day was initiated in order to promote Computer Science education in Westmoreland County high schools. Our goal was to bring students together to experience some CS-related topics in hopes of encouraging them to continue to seek out CS-related courses in their schools. We had hoped to bring in a maximum of 60 students but we ended up with 70 from Ligonier, Derry, Penn Trafford, Norwin, Hempfield, Giebel, and Greater Latrobe. We exceeded our expectations and look forward to providing this opportunity to more students in the years to come. Computer Science really does offer something that can be of interest to every student. Events like these highlight some of the areas of Computer Science that are available for students.” – Wendy Lint Computer Science Teacher at Greater Latrobe
On Tuesday, October 17, 2023, I and 12 other students from Grater Latrobe including Kaden Shannon, Lukas Deemer, Aidan Salvatore, Olivia Ulishney, Ethan Hopkins, Hunter Dumnich, Jacob Harris, Cody Hopkins, Sidnee Cosentino-Knopp, Nicholas Dominick, Henry Hogg, Devin Coffey went to St. Vincent Collage for a day of different activities all revolved around CS-related topics. We were accompanied by Jessica Yetter.
After the 10-minute bus ride, we students arrived at the college and made our way to the science section of the school. We were led into the auditorium where Aaron Sams introduced the activities of the day, the schedule we would follow, and the teachers who would be introducing each section to us.
After the introduction, we went to our first activity, which was coding with Wendy Lint. Mrs. Lint has been a teacher here at Greater Latrobe for 18 years. She has a computer science bachelor’s degree, she went to the University of Pittsburg and Florida International University for college. For coding, we used a website called Python. Python is a programming language that is great for beginners and that is easy to start learning with. It has been being used for 32 years. The class got very into the activity and excelled in the course. And as we were walking out of the class to go to the next activity we were all handed a small yellow rubber duck. Mrs. Lint has rubber ducks of all sizes throughout her classroom and this is because of rubber duck debugging!
The next activity we had was a cybersecurity course with Anthony Serapiglia. Dr. Serapiglia has been a teacher at St. Vincent College for 12 years. He went to Robert Morris University and Allegheny College where he got a Bachelor’s degree in Science and a Minor in Education. For this activity, we did a wireshake activity. It is used for network troubleshooting, analysis, software, communication protocol development, and education. The class also did amazing in the activity and most found the hidden message we were supposed to find!
The last activity we had was focused on drones and completing a course without it crashing or running into anything. The teacher for this activity was Ken Hackman and he teaches at Darry Area High School. Here in this section of the day, we used small drones. The assignment was to get them from one side of the room and fly them around an obstacle, without hitting the ground or any walls. We first created a small code that would tell the drone what to do like: W= Up, D= Down, ext. The we went out and tested the course, and attempted to complete the activity. Only two out of six groups were able to complete the challenge.
After that, we went to lunch then the awards part of the night. Awards were presented to the students who excelled in each part of the day. The awards you could get were St. Vincent Hoddies, a St. Vincent t-shirt, and a St. Vincent hat.
In my opinion, this trip was a great way to show a few different types of CS-related activities that you may have never done before. The teachers were amazing and talked us through everything so we could fully experience the activity we were doing. It was a wonderful experience and if I ever get the opportunity to go to a similar event I would definitely do it, and so should you.
