After-School Apprenticeships in Technology

In the past year, Citizen Schools has developed and delivered a multitude of outstanding technology apprenticeships as part of our STEM apprenticeship initiative that focused on building analytic and academic skills essential to related domains. Students and adults of diverse backgrounds forged positive relationships and at the same time, students were introduced to new opportunities and innovative information on STEM careers.

With help from a variety of partner organizatinos and supporters, Citizen Schools volunteers led more than 150 STEM apprenticeships in academic year 2006-07 - nearly 20% of the total apprenticeships offered. As we prepare to launch academic year 2007-08, we hope to sustain and exceed this number of STEM apprenticeships at our sites across the country.

One of our most substantial and exciting successes was our partnership with MIT in computer science. Students in technology apprenticeships debuted their learning and products at Kids Online! hosted by the MIT Media Lab. One of the featured apprenticeships was Scratch, a digital, multi-media software program that allows for more intuitive, kid-friendly programming to create music, animation and movies (instead of complex algorithms, the program uses visual blocks students string together). As you can imagine, this process was quite appealing to our young students; not only did they enjoy themselves, but they also learned important mathematical and computational ideas and gained a deeper understanding of the process of design. You can visit our students’ work online at http://scratch.mit.edu/galleries/14.