SUNDAY 1 JULY, 2018 – UWI TODAY
21
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
If computing and robotics fascinate you,
then you
will enjoy the upcoming fourth annual Computing
Boot Camp being organised by UWI’s Department
of Computing and Information Technology (DCIT).
The camp will be held from July 9-13 with the
theme: “Bots that See and Bots that Do”. Robotics,
extended sensor applications, vision and voice
applications are planned together with traditional
camp elements (career guidance, campus tours, social
events). Guest speakers are confirmed from Google
and Virtana.
These camps have proved very successful, as
last year’s experience shows. Last year’s Computing
Boot Camp began on July 17, 2017 and was held
for five days at the UWI, St Augustine Campus
with the theme “Code: The Glue that Connects
Everything”. Twenty-two secondary school students
from Forms 4 to 6 attended and were introduced to
the foundational aspects of Computer Science (CS) and
Information Technology (IT) using the Raspberry PI
microcomputer and programmable robots.
Several schools across Trinidad were represented
last year, such as San Fernando Secondary, St
Anthony’s College, St Augustine Girls’ High School,
Hillview College, Holy Faith Convent – Couva,
NortheasternCollege, Trinity College East, andVishnu
Boys’ Hindu College among others. The camp was
supported by corporate sponsors TTNIC and Republic
Bank; philanthropic business sponsors Shami’s Variety,
Jazfan Trading andArdis Limited, and individuals who
contributed scholarships for students.
The 2017BootCampwas chairedbyDr Permanand
Mohan, the current Head of Department. A core team
of research students and staff at the DCIT, led by Dr
Phaedra Mohammed, coordinated the event with the
help of several postgraduate and undergraduate CS
student volunteers.
The 2017 camp was designed with a highly
interactive, hands-on approach where the teaching
sessions involved direct manipulation of the robot
code using the Raspberry PI from the first day with
an incremental increase in complexity for three days.
This approach seemed to promote positive perceptions
of CS. When asked to describe the camp in five words,
the top responses included “Fun”, “Interesting”, and
“Challenging” along with many positive variants.
One participant commented, “The programming of
the robot was super fun, whether it was the music or
the dancing or just making the robot move forward.”
The participants were assigned to teams and
used sensors connected to the robots to solve
problems ranging from simple movements, to obstacle
detection and avoidance, to complicatedmaze-solving.
Throughout the camp, each team was mentored by
individual volunteers. The rest of days were allocated
to free-form work and mentoring on projects which
were also effective in stimulating creativity, building
camaraderie and encouraging a fun experience.
Overall, the teams produced impressive solutions such
that the final maze challenge had to be extended with
an advanced stage.
‘Bots that see and do’
Robotics and computing are featured in this month’s Computing Boot Camp: What’s not to love?
B Y D R P H A E D R A M O H A M M E D
2017 Computing Boot Camp Participants (light blue), Mentors (royal blue) and Committee Mentors (dark blue)
Closeup of Robot
Teams working on programming code for various problems
One of the motivating factors for the camp, which
started in 2011, is to encourage students to choose CS/
IT as future career paths. Several former participants
have gone on to pursue various degrees in CS, IT
locally at UWI and internationally at the University
of Waterloo, and University of Ontario Institute of
Technology.
Half of the 2017 bootcampers indicated that they
are more likely to pursue CS degrees than when they
started the camp, despite having other career paths
in mind. All of them said that they now feel more
confident to be able to handle a degree in CS.
In fact, one former bootcamper completed a BSc
CS undergraduate degree at UWI this year and intends
to enroll in a CS postgraduate degree at the DCIT in
September 2018. He commented, “The DCIT boot
camp taught me a lot about the fields of CS and IT,
but in a very fun and interactive way. By the end of
the camp I had learnt enough to confidently decide
to pursue computer science further.” Another former
bootcamper, who is currently enrolled in a BSc CS
and Math degree at the University of Pennsylvania,
commented, “I really enjoyed it, somuch that I wanted
to volunteer this year (2018).” He will be joining our
slate of 2018 mentors in the next edition of the camp
this month.
