By Ryan Hunter—
MUNCIE, IN—Local middle school students spent one of the last weekends of summer vacation at the Innovation Connector in Muncie, working together to design and launch their own business ideas. The three day experience, held on July 25-27th, taught these young students the basics of tech entrepreneurship and foundational knowledge of robotics programming, app development, and artificial intelligence. Working in teams, they spent the weekend designing tech-driven businesses aimed at solving challenges both in their community and around the world.
“Our goal was to bring students from across the community together to tackle problems using technology,” said Ted Baker, CEO and Executive Director of the Innovation Connector. “Artificial intelligence will play a major role in the future, and we want these young people to understand how to use it effectively. Our TechWise Academy initiative empowers young learners to code and apply technology to real-world challenges”
The weekend was based off of Techstars’s Startup Weekend concept. The idea is to gather individuals and work on a brand new business idea over the weekend. Typically these are held at colleges & universities and participants come into the weekend with most of the foundational knowledge.
“I wondered, why can’t middle schoolers take this on? What if we gave them a framework for success and let them tackle the problems they were most passionate about?” said Ryan Hunter, Director of Technology & Education at the Innovation Connector. “The other mentors and I were amazed by the quality of their ideas and how engaged they remained all weekend.”
“I picked my son up at 7 p.m. (after arriving at 9 a.m. on Saturday) expecting him to be exhausted,” said one parent, “however, he just kept talking about his group’s idea and how much fun he had during the day.”
Students spent the weekend working on the three P’s: Plan (Business), Prototype, and Presentation. Mentors were available to help develop their business plans and to build a prototype for the problem they were solving.
Tech-Spark weekend was completely free to students and was made possible by the generosity of the George & Frances Ball Foundation.
About TechWise Academy
TechWise Academy teaches coding and computer science to children, K-12, and introduces them to new ways to problem solve and explore curiosity and creativity. Visit techwiseacademy.com to enroll in online or in-person coding and robotics classes or find free resources..
