Tech Camp is an immersive, invitation-only summer camp experience for central Iowa high school students. Since the first camp in 2013, a cohort of 8th or 9th grade students are invited each year with consideration given to socioeconomic status, gender and ethnicity/race. The new cohort, as well as the previous four cohorts, are invited to attend the one-week summer camp. Thus, many students in the program attend camp each year for up to five years as students who attend three or more years become eligible to receive a scholarship upon high school graduation.
During Tech Camp, students attend inspirational speaker sessions, technology exploration sessions and participate in other activities. Technology sessions are organized into tracks of software, hardware and physical computing or web development and media. Technologies and topics typically presented include, but are not limited to, Agile, Arduino, cloud computing, cybersecurity, engineering, game development, HTML/CSS/JS, machine learning, Python and robotics. All sessions are delivered by local technology professionals serving as volunteer speakers, facilitators and mentors. Students not only learn from and get to work alongside the professionals, but they get to engage with the professionals while discussing education, careers, jobs, motivations, skills, recommended resources and the like.
Special thanks to Athene, Bankers Trust, The Bayer Fund, EMC Insurance, Farm Bureau Financial Services, GuideOne Foundation, John Deere Des Moines Operations Committee, Lean TECHniques, Merchants Bonding and Vermeer Corporation for sponsoring Tech Journey’s 2024 summer programming.
