By Michael Leventhal | Chief Nerdy Development Officer
iNERDE Expands to Year-Round Operation in Mali
iNERDE STEM Summer Camp 2016 - Bigger and Better!
iNERDE Announces New Program CodeNerde - 2 Week Programming/CS Boot Camp
iNERDE will being year-round operation in Bamako, Mali in April with 2 permanent, full-time staff. Michael Leventhal, iNERDE's Chief Nerdy Development Officer, is moving to Bamako to lead a number of development activities and to oversee full-time operations. Michael will put into place a year-round mentoring program for iNERDE's teachers so that they can bring their iNERDE experience to their schools year round. He will also be developing a permanent outreach program to Bamako schools. To make the most of the 60 desktop and laptop computers donated to iNERDE by EMC Corporation, Michael will also be setting up a year-round computer lab and learning facility. Michael will be ably assisted by Katikon, iNERDE's Liasion Officer. Katikon is a native of Bamako, speaks the local language, Bambara, and French, is a dedicated iNERDE Nerd, veteran teaching assistant from last summer's camp, and passionate youth advocate. He will work with Michael to build great relationships with the community, schools, parents, and organizations.
iNERDE's 2016 edition of our STEM Summer Camp will increase in enrollment from 120 last year to a minimum of 200 Nerdy kids this year. We've already added two new partner schools. Geographically, iNERDE now is reaching most areas of Bamako, a very large, spread-out city. We've been working hard on improving and augmenting our curriculum and on our teacher training materials. We've joined forces with a new organization recently spun out of the French chapter of the Society for Technical Communicators (STC), Technical Writers without Borders. TWWB is putting their extraordinary communication skills to work to improve our teacher training materals ... AND putting the materials online in an education forum.
Michael has been cooking up a great new program for iNERDE - a two week computer science/programming boot camp, CodeNerde. CodeNerde will run one day a week, concurrent with the regular STEM camp, and finish with a final full week the week following the end of regular camp. Students will get a deep dive in basic computer science and they will learn to program, completing a program by the end. CodeNerde will feature ROBOTS!, with students learning to program AERobots, Affordable Education Robots, developed by the Wyse Institute of Harvard University.
iNERDE is looking forward to great camp this summer and a great first year of year-round operation. We've gotten bigger and better and we are having a revolutionary impact on education in Mali. We are getting noticed and we are talking about bigger things to come as we build our program in Senegal and in other African countries. We owe it all to you. Thank you so much for your support of iNERDE. You have made a big difference and started something that is planting a thousand and thousand thousand seeds. Thank you.
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