AMA with Wolfram Education Programs Team

Hello there. My name is Rory Fulger and I am the Education Programs Manager at Wolfram Research. And today we're going to just chat through all about summer programs and other educational programs that might be available for kids, teenagers and people of all ages. I have my colleague Aaron with me. So Aaron, would you like to introduce yourself?

Hello, I'm Aaron. I'm a member of Rory's team working on all these educational programs. I've been involved with the programs in one way or another since 2019, so I think Rory has as well. We've been around for a while and we're excited to chat with you guys.

Yeah, perfect. So we're going to chat through a bunch of our different programs that we have available. So let's just go through a quick overview of what we have. So for our younger students, for girls aged 11 to 14ish, we have the Wolfram Middle School Summer Camp which is a lots of fun one week online camp where we teach WOLM language in a really fun and interesting way and the kids get to do lots of fun, fun projects. We also have the Wolfram Spring program in the uk which is a brand new camp this this year where teenagers in England in southwest of England get to come to to campus in Cheltenham in England to learn Wolfram language and do fun projects and learn lots of computational thinking and really dive into some STEM topics. Our big flagship program is the Wolfram Summer Research Program which is for high school students. We're based in Boston in Massachusetts and we run that for two and a half, three weeks during the summer. And that's where our kids get to get really involved in doing an independent project and learning Wolfram language and getting very deep into a STEM subject area of their choice under the guidance of some fantastic mentors. So they have a really great time. Additionally, we have another new program called Computational Adventures where students of all ages from about 7ish all the way up to, you know, retired individuals who want to learn something new can log in and learn WOLM language and learn some computational thinking skills in a set of really fun and interesting projects that are guided and they can do some tutorials and have a lot of fun. For alumni of our summer programs, we have the Wolfram Emerging Leaders program which has grown a lot in the last few years where students do, if they're high school aged, a group project over the course of a semester and if they're undergraduate aged, then they do a individual project over the course of a full school year, again under the guidance of some spectacular mentors and they get to publish their work at the end. And we also have the student ambassador initiative, which is a really great opportunity for high schoolers and undergraduates and graduate students to get to know Wolfram better, connect with a big community of other, you know, like minded individuals and do some projects and have some fun. So let's get into a little bit more detail. Aaron, do you want to tell us a little about the middle school summer camp? Like first off, you know, who, who are the students that we, that we have at the camp?

Yeah. So our middle school camp is aimed towards girls and gender non conforming students who are 11 to 14. So really hitting that middle school age thinking like seventh, eighth grade.

Awesome.

And yeah, and it's all virtual and, and so these students could be anywhere in the world. So really just kind of got the, you know, looking for girls and gender non conforming students and just that age limit. So there's no need to travel. We do have to be in a specific time zone to lead the camp. But you know, depending on when you're willing to wake up, you could do the camp from anywhere.

Yeah, totally. I mean I think we had kids last year from, you know, India and China and whatever kind of. I think we had, we had one kid kind of taking class from, from a dark room so that the brother could sleep and. Yeah. All over the world. It's pretty cool.

Yeah.

What, what, what do they, what do they learn? What do we do?

So the middle school camp is one week long and over the course of it they're starting to learn some, some of those basics of thinking computationally and programming using Wolfram language. So we not only talk about like, you know, here's the basics of how to start coding, but also we talk about the thought processes behind like how to break down a problem into code. And we do this through a combination of these lectures which are often led by our middle school mentors who are previous students from our other programs and then also hands on workshops and activities that they're, you know, being given a more open ended problem and working together to solve it. So kind of combining those two more engaging hands on learning and a little bit, but not very much lecturing.

Nice. Awesome. Yeah. So and for the, for the middle school, I guess the requirements, so we, we had a question about requirements for middle school. They, they just need to be the, the right age. We don't look at the middle school level for any particular like, you know, they don't have to have coded before. They don't have to be Excelling in school or anything. They just need to have like an interest and a passion with STEM and be able to, you know, functionally use a computer. Our high school program is much more selective. We, most of our students are very, very well, all of our students are very, very smart. Many of them have taken accelerated course loads in school or doing a lot of outside of school academic activities. They're all highly passionate about some part of stem, something specific. They're all kind of independent learners and have the kind of maturity and personality that will allow them to, to live residentially with us for, for that couple of weeks. We don't require the high schoolers to have done coding before and for those who haven't, we have a pre programmed workshop that we'll talk about in more detail in a minute so that they can learn, learn coding at a, at a nice, nice fast paced, fast pace. We have students from all around the world and we offer financial aid. So we hope that, you know, there aren't financial requirements, huge financial requirements for students attending the programs. And we're also super supportive of, you know, twice exceptional students, students were gifted and also have learning disabilities. I personally am particularly interested in that in that group. My, my master's thesis was, was all about that group. So we're pretty, we're pretty well versed on, on a variety of learning disabilities that often affect our students. So we, we have a really great bunch of kids. And the application process at the middle school level is filling out a form and they write a short, you know, why are you interested in coming to this program? Essay. And they submit a, a couple of minutes video interview where they, they can, you know, do that video on their own like in their own time. And we watch that video and read their essay and then admit are some, you know, fantastic students. The high school level is a bit more of an involved process. So they will fill out our application form which has a couple of different essay questions and a problem set. So we ask them to figure out some code in Wolfram language and you know, write some, some justifications for why they wrote this code in this way. And then people who do a decent problem set, decent application, we will have an interview with them and then we discuss each student as a team before admitting them. Yeah, so that's, that's our kind of requirements for applying and what the application looks like for, for those programs. I guess I, I have one more question, Aaron, about middle school. Yeah, so what, yeah, so what do we, what do we do, you know, other than, other than our Academics where we're, we're having a lot of fun, you know, learning, learning coding, learning computational thinking. What, what else do we do?

Yeah, so we, the middle school program is structured over the course of. We start it.

Oh no, I think we might have lost Aaron. But I think what everyone was saying was we start about 8 o' clock in the morning and finish about 4 o' clock in the afternoon in Pacific time. And we start off at the very beginning of the day with a social activity and we will play, play games, have some fun. And then in the lunch hour we will usually have another activity or a, a more relaxed thing like putting on a, putting on some, some cartoons that they can watch or they can go out and you know, get their lunch. And then in the late afternoon we'll have another social activity where we'll maybe do something more like, a more fun academic. So like, like a, you know, coding challenges or show and tell where they will tell us about something exciting that they've learned, you know, in their, in their general life. And yeah, and, and then we also have stuff like Q&As with Stephen Wolfram and with, it's a, it's a girls, girls camp. So we have, you know, a panel of women in, women in STEM that, you know, Aaron and I are not able to fulfill that. So we get some, some awesome women from the rest of the company to come and chat with the students about their kind of journeys into, into stem. And we generally, generally will have a fantastic time playing games, doing activities. We'll do some physical activities. You know, we'll have dance hour, we'll have, you know, origami. We, you know, we'll come up with all kinds of things. Yoga we've had in the past, creative writing, art. We, we will play, play online games like Geoguessr or like the Wiki game. Navigating Wikipedia. Yeah, and we have, we have a really fantastic time. So the, the next program that we want to, we want to talk about is the spring program in the uk which is a brand new program that we're going to be doing actually next month. So our first time next month in April over the Easter break in the uk we'll be in Cheltenham, England at Dean Close School doing a bunch of activities with a nice small tight group of secondary school students in the UK in years nine through 12 or 13. And we will be doing a pretty similar vibe to the middle school program. So having a lot of activities and fun stuff to do to learn to code and generally be having a, a great time learning some computational thinking skills. So, you know, if anybody's in the UK wants to send their kid, then we would love to have them. And the applications are still open for that program and we're excited to see that question in the chat was how do we individualize the experience? And that is a really great, great question. So some of our. I'll talk about individualization in the high school program in a second, but for the middle school program, we put a lot of effort into organizing the kids into groups. And at the beginning and end of each day we. Sorry. At the end of each day we kind of recalculate who should be in what group. And each group is led by a mentor and will usually have three or four, maybe five students in it who are at a similar level to each other. And so for each. So the structure of a class session is that the, the teacher will talk for three or four minutes and then the students go off and do some activities. And what we'll usually do is have a big list of activities for that particular topic, like maybe 10, 15 activities. And some of those groups will do one or two or three of those activities. And some of the groups will do all 15. So it really, they, they kind of get to spend as long as they need to on each topic before we move on without, without the class going faster or slower for any, any individual. So all the individuals feel like they have a customized and individual experience. But the class as a whole is moving kind of at, at a pretty similar rate. Kids who have programmed a lot before are still learning a new language. Right? So while we do spend some amount of time talking about the, the kind of basics of, of coding through any language, it's often more focused on learning. Wolfram and other languages are structured in some ways quite differently and have different things that, that are accessible to young learners that are available for them to do. So where in Python if you're kind of 12, you might make a stopwatch or something like that, and that would be a perfectly feasible project to do in Python. In Wolfram, you might do a data visualization kind of mini project and that will be a slightly different type of activity. So we don't feel like it'll be repeating activities that kids who are good at another language might be good at. Follow up question. What happens with the middle schoolers once they're done with this program? Know, is it a program that they, that they take multiple times or is it program that they go straight to the high school group? The high school group we don't accept students under 13 because it's a residential program and we, we don't want our kind of almost 18 year olds hanging around with 12 year olds because that would be bad for everyone for both of those, those people. So 13 and up for the high school crowd. So if a student takes, does middle school, does our middle school program the summer they turn 11 then they might do it again the next year and then the following year they would do the high school program. If a student takes, it takes our middle school program the summer that they turn 13 then they would be welcome to come to the high school program the following year. We will often have students do. So the middle school camp is one week before the high school program. So if we have, you know, a 13 year old who maybe is, you know, is, is capable of doing the high school program but maybe needs a little bit more of a, an on ramp, a slower intro or is, is nervous or wants to, you know, get really confident before they arrive at the high school program where there's, they're around a lot of 17 year olds who maybe, you know, most likely know more coding than they do. Then we invite middle school students to attend the middle school program and the high school program in the same summer we've had, I don't know Aaron, 4,5ish kids do that and that works really well and they have a great time. But yeah, if they're 11 or 12 then we can't have them at the high school program that summer or they need to turn 13 before they can come to high school. But we have plenty of middle school kids do the middle school program twice. And then we have dozens of the high school kids who do the high school program twice. And that's, that's a real thing. People, people come come multiple times in a row, which is really cool. Yeah. So we, we've talked about the middle school program and the UK program. So let's have a chat about the high school program. Oh, I just noticed one question about, about Wolfram Erin, do you maybe want to, want to, to address that?

Yeah, I can answer this question. I think it. So the, the question is what industries or areas of academia use well from in the real world and this is a, I mean a bunch of them do. I think it's with a lot of coding languages. You know, it depends on like what university or what company you're at, what technology they're going to decide to use. But you know, a great real world example is myself in my own undergrad experience. My department used A lot of Wolfram language for, you know, not even just like, oh, we have to do, you know, we use it in one class. It was used repeatedly in a bunch of my classes and it was super useful for me to know how to use it to make, you know, teachers would make little modules that have a lot built in that you could then do more with if you know how to actually use the language. So for me it was super useful because my department used it a ton. So it's a little bit less like there's a specific industry and more it'll depend on, you know, if you are ending up in a group that is going to be using it a lot. Other I did material science. There are other material science departments that don't use Wolfram. There are others that also use Wolfram just like mine did. So it really depends more a little bit on where you are than necessarily like the field you want to go into.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Fantastic. So, so about the high school program. The high school program is our, a kind of flagship, flagship program, Big guy. We have about 55, 60 students attend every, every year. We're based in Boston, Massachusetts and it's. What are we this year? June 23rd to July 13th, including the, the pre program workshop. So it's about three weeks. We spend the first couple of days online. So and then we meet up in, in Boston on 28 June to start all of our big stuff. So let's shout first, Erin, what's the pre program workshop? Who would come to that and what do we do?

Yeah, so the pre program workshop is for kids who are, you know, coming to the main program but they haven't taken any computer science before and they kind of like, you know, Roy was just talking about, we have kids who do. The middle school is a little bit of an on ramp. It's a similar kind of thing but for the high school students. So it's two days of going over the basics of using Wolfram language, doing hands on activities, getting exposure to it and then they see that same stuff again with all of the rest of the kids. But with the rest of the kids it's usually going at a faster pace. So it helps it so they can like see it twice before they actually have to start using it for their projects which are, which is kind of the biggest big focus of the program is all of the project time they get. We only have about, I think it's four days of instruction teaching them how to code before we set them loose on actually using it for a real project application. And speaking of the project, since it's such a big part of the program, we have a whole process how the kids actually get their projects. I know, Rory, if you want to talk a little bit about our whole process to make sure these kids are getting cool and interesting and well suited projects for their skill levels and their interests.

Yeah, totally. So all of the kids at the program do an individual project over the course of this three weeks where they. And our allocation process is very involved. So during their application, kids submit project proposals. Our team comes up with around 200 potential projects for them to do. And students then once they're all signed up and they're ready to come, they fill out a form where they get to talk about the subject areas that they're interested in. So maybe they're interested in biology is their favorite topic. And they're also really into math, and they're also really into, I don't know, photography. Are there, like, they're things that they're really into and they want a project that is, you know, 80% biology and 20% photography. But they'd be sad if there was no math. And they get to tell us that in, in the form. And then once we actually get to Boston, each student will have a one on one meeting with us and Stephen Wolfram where we talk through what they're interested in and we float some potential projects for them. And we'll say, you know, we've come up with this project for you. We think this is a really good match. And then, you know, sometimes they're like, that's fantastic. I love this project. I'm really excited. I'm going to go and do that. And that happens, I don't know, probably 60, 70% of the time. And then the rest of the time the kid will be like, that's a really cool idea, but can we, can we switch, you know, this bit? I want it to have more math, I want it to have more biology. I, I want, you know, I bought this data set full of photos that I've taken of birds over the last three years in my backyard, and I'd like to incorporate that. And we're like, great, let's do it. And so we'll help them come up with a really great project title. And then they get matched up with a mentor who is going to be really good at helping them with their project. And then they go and do their project. Yeah, so I think that's, that's kind of the that's kind of the process. But what. Maybe, maybe this is a tough question to ask Aaron off the top of the head, but what kind of projects do kids end up doing?

Oh gosh, there's always a big variety. You know, for example, we always have a handful of kids who are really into machine learning. So we almost always have a couple machine learning projects. And usually with those we also try to incorporate some other kind of interest. So we've had some kind of like image based machine learning that have some kind of biomedical slant to what their, what their know, training their model to do. We also have some projects that are much more exploratory. This is usually a little bit more on the kind of like the math and physics side of things where they're almost doing computational research on their topic a bit and getting something that's almost closer to like a research paper at the end than say, like just a bunch of code. We have some that are a little bit more like trying to build practical tools for some application. We had some project about building tools for doing chemistry. We also have some that are kind of just a little bit more out there that you might not think of at first. I think the guitar one on this page is a really great example. So we had a student who was really interested in guitar and also teaching. And so we combined that into a project for building this tool to help people who are learning how to play guitar. And so it's a, it's a pretty, if you have an interest in some topic area, we're going to come up with a project that makes, makes sense for that interest for, you know, the, the skill level we are expecting the kids to get to in this program and also the length of time. And we have some kids who really want to do a project that's maybe going to take a really long time. And, and so sometimes we have kids who do a scaled down version and then afterwards on their own time, they spend, even get more into the meat of it than what we can really, really do in two weeks. But it's a pretty big, pretty big scope of what the kids can do in their projects. I see another question. What tangible benefits away from learning a proprietary programming language would you say the middle or high school kids come away with? I don't know if. Rory, you want to talk about the other, other benefits beyond just learning Wolfram language?

Yeah, totally. And there are, there are a bunch. So especially for the, at the high school level, we do a lot of, you know, thinking about thinking so figuring out how your Brain works, how to make it work to solve problems efficiently. So we call that computational thinking, which is pretty great. We do a lot of helping students to be independent learners. So figuring out what to do is hard. And we help them, we give them a lot of support to figure out what to do and to figure out how to solve their problems. So yeah, independent learning, problem solving. My really big thing that I love to say to the students a lot is that we, we teach failure at our high school program. So we teach them, you know, they, they will fail in this program frequently and, and regularly. And that is fantastic because that is how you learn. And it's my, my experience that traditional, you know, classroom education discourages failure, you know, because you've got to, you got to pass this test, you got to get a good grade. We take all of that away and we create this environment where students can develop a growth mindset, where they get to fail at something, feel sad about it for a second, and then, you know, go at the next thing harder or change their approach, figure something out, ask questions, figure out how to, you know, ask questions of their peers, ask questions of their mentors. And I think that that's an incredibly valuable skill. They will also learn a bunch of content. So, you know, if we were, if we're looking at these, these projects that we just had on the screen, know, in order to accomplish these projects, they have to learn about, you know, neuroscience or ancient Greek syntax or multi way systems or protein sequences, you know, and they, so they learn a lot of content that in order to do their project. So they generally, you know, they'll come, they'll come with some knowledge about the thing that they, that they're studying, but they get, you know, really deep into, into something specific, which is a lot of fun. And then they also learn a bunch of other kind of soft skills, you know, time management. We allow the students to kind of pick the, the environment, physical environment that they're working in. You know, so I, are they going to work more efficiently in a quiet room or a room with music playing or, you know, I think 2019, when Aaron and I were there for, for the first time, we had a, a room where students chose to sit in the dark in silence. They turned off all the lights, they shut the curtains, and they sat there in silence working on their projects. And, and we kept going in and being like, are you guys okay? And then being, yep, this is perfect. This is a happy environment for us. So we try and help them to find, you know, the environments that they like. To work in and support and encourage them to learn about their own brain and their own thoughts. And then there's all the social stuff. You know, living together on a university campus is really challenging. Many of the students haven't, haven't done a, a big residential program before they get to, you know, live on a university campus, which is really great for our older students as kind of a practice run and really fun for the younger students because they're not concerned about university. So they just get to run around a campus and be like, wow, it's so cool to be grown up and. Yeah. And so stuff like getting themselves to meals, getting themselves to bed, you know, getting, making friends. These are all really, really important skills as they, as they grow up. So yeah, it's definitely not just, just learning Wolfram and then we send them away. They, they have a large amount of other skills. Quick question about middle school. Can students participate on a laptop or as a desktop computer required? They definitely don't need a desktop. Um, they, you need like a real laptop, though. You can't do it on like a Chromebook or an iPad. But as long as you have, you know, a real laptop, then you're totally fine for middle school. Oh, and for us, what was your, what was our favorite aspect educational aspect of the program when we took it? So we did not attend the high school program as students. We have both only ever been mentors or done directors. I was a mentor for one year and then I became the director just, just after the 2020 summer program. Aaron, did you do two years of mentoring?

I don't know how many years I've done. I've been mentoring since 2019. I think I've done three years. Maybe three years.

Mentor, one directing.

Yeah, that sounds right.

No, you did two directing. Anyways, some number of. Some number. And so we, we haven't been students at the, at the program. We're a little, a little old for that. But I attended the, the Wolfram summer School for adults when I was an undergrad. Um, and that was a lot of fun. Um, obviously more geared to the grown up crowd. So the high school program has a lot more guidance and assistance and social activities than the adult program. We take, we take really good care of them and. But yeah, I think as a, as a staff member, my favorite part is always when a kid is really struggling. So as directors, Aaron and I, we're usually the kind of last stop for kids. You know, they, they've talked to a friend and then they've talked to a teaching assistant. And then they talk to their mentor, and then, you know, maybe their mentor can't figure it out, or maybe their mentor is just busy. But they, they tend to come to us, us last. So they've usually been struggling for. For a hot second with, with a, With a problem, and they'll come and, you know, ask us to help, and we will help them to figure it out themselves. We don't, we don't tell them answers, and, and it's really wonderful when the kid figures it out. And the kind of rush of confidence is really fun. So that's always my favorite part. Erin, as a staff member, your favorite.

Thing, I would say, and it's probably one of the things. One of the few things I think I miss now as being a director instead of a mentor is the getting to foster a little, like, mini community with your group of students. So each mentor has about four to five kids in their group that they're helping out and just getting to kind of separate from their friends that they're maybe hanging out with in the social activities. You know, foster this, like, supportive group for working on problems together and, you know, working through things. It was just such a great, great to get to start that environment with the kids and then see them take it and run with it in terms of, like, helping each other out with their, Their, you know, problems they're running into, talking through what they're working on with their projects, getting to see each. Them get excited about, you know, the cool things that their peers are working on in that kind of smaller environment where it's just these kids who are hanging out for two weeks together for hours and hours working on their projects and seeing how, how close they get and how supportive they are over that time was always really, really fun and sweet to me. And I do miss it a little bit sometimes. Being a director and working with all of the kids instead of having that kind of little bit closer connection that those mentors get to have.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I agree. It's hard to foster an individual relationship with 60 kids, which is why it's so awesome that we have this large group of mentors and teaching assistants who get to get really close to the kids. So the kids, you know, the kids always say that one of their, Their favorite parts of it, you know, in the. In the feedback that we get from them after is the kind of close relationship that they had with their mentors and with their mental group, other. Other kids working under their mentor. So it's really awesome that we, we get to have, Have Those kind of close relationships developed. It's a lot of, a lot of fun. Yeah, we have a good time. Now that we've kind of talked about the, the, like the big academic things, the project stuff, maybe we should chat about the kind of other academic activities that we do beyond, beyond doing the project. So we spend a lot of time doing the project, but they also have other activities that they do. So we've talked about in the first couple of days they learn Wolfram language and we do a quick, quick course where they go from knowing some stuff all the way to like being pretty competent developing in developing a project. So. Oh, and we've had a question about excursions outside of campus, which we do do. We do actually. Erin, why don't you tell us about our big field trip?

Yeah, so our big field trip is or for the past few years has been a trip to mit. I personally went to MIT for undergrad and so we do a little campus tour. I talk to them about my experience there. They get to see, you know, we're not taking them into a lab necessarily, but there's labs where you can peer in a window and kind of see what, what's going on there. And then we just starting this last year and we're going to continue this year also take them to the MIT Museum, which has a lot of cool tech related history stuff and also sometimes tech related art stuff. And it's a really. They recently upgraded to a new building and so it's this big space where the kids can kind of get to see some history about some topics that they might not have been been thinking about. That still got that kind of tech connection to camp. And that's kind of our big excursion where they get to kind of see Boston, where the camp itself is based, you know, outside of Boston. So they get to be in the city, but we'll lead them through campus, take them to the museum and have a nice, nice day out where they kind of get a little bit of a break in a sense from stem, but also not fully because they're still, they're still learning while they're out.

Yeah, I love the MIT trip. It's a lot of fun. We also do another couple of smaller field trips going into Waltham, which is, is where the university campus is based. We're at Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts. And you know, we'll have one, one trip where they get to just walk around town and spend, you know, a couple of hours off campus where they just get to, you know, go to shops and Eat dinner if they want to and just hang out on the kind of green space. And so that's very chill. We, there's no learning there. It's not a learning activity. And then the other one is we have a trip going into the conservation land, big, big nature reserve where they just get to go on a kind of somewhat guided hike and you know, look at the nature and get some exercise and some fresh air. It's an all kind of cooped up on their, on their screens and they just get to. Get to have some fun doing that. So yeah, a couple of, couple of out, out of campus excursions, I guess. While, while we're on that, let's talk about some social activities and, and maybe the miners. So yeah, do you want to just give us an overview of what kind of social activities we do and then I'll talk about miners in a sec.

Yeah. So social activities, we really try to get a good spread because we know we've got a lot of kids with a lot of different interests and there are, you know, there's some kids where at the end of the day they want to go run around outside and get some energy off. And there's other kids who would maybe prefer to just sit inside and do an activity that's a little bit more calm and chill. So we structure the day. We sometimes have afternoon social activities though most often they're in the evenings. And we usually have a. And these are led by our teaching assistants. They put together these wonderful activities for the kids to do and they'll, you know, go outside and play outdoor games. We've had. There's a big. Usually we usually have a few kids who are very into Minecraft and so we usually have specific social activities for building out the Minecraft server that we have for the program. And there's kids who have spent that time building some truly crazy things that I, I don't even know how they have the time to build it all while also doing their projects. And then we have some more, you know, sometimes later on in the program, the social activities might get a little bit, you know, they want just to be in a quiet room and decompress for a bit and we'll throw on a movie and that kind of stuff. So yeah, we really try to hit a big variety because we know we have all of these kids who after a long day of work have different ways they're going to want to decompress. So we normally run like two or three different social activities at a given time and then they can pick oh, today I want to go play capture the flag outside. And then the next day maybe they want to stay in and play card games with their friends. So we really try to hit a lot of variety for all the kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then minors.

Minors. So minors are a, a pretty new, pretty new thing that we started last year. So every child signs up for, for a minor and over the course of five evenings they will create something or do something cool with their minor miners. Last year that we did were creative writing, art, music and kind of theater and movement stuff. A bit of dance, bit of theater, bit of running around. And the kids got to. So I, I led the creative writing minor with, with Aaron. And we did poetry, we did short stories. We wrote the kind of story for a video game, like a kind of click through text video game. And the kids, you know, will often prepare something for the talent show at the end during minors. So they might, you know, in the art minor they made comic books and got to show those off at the talent show at the end in the music minor, they, you know, kind of did a, did a big musical number, big song thing. The theater and drama stuff, they did some skits and they, it's, it's really fun. It's a really great way to decompress away from, away from the stem stuff while still being productive and engaged. And they also get to develop some like actual skills. I think especially in creative writing and in art. They, they learned new techniques that they hadn't done before to do really fun activities. You know, so art. They did, you know, they did some drawing and they did some painting and they, they made these comic books, they did book binding, they did leaf pressing. You know, they did stuff with ink, all kinds of stuff. And in writing, they, they had a lot of opportunities to create some cool different, different modes of creative writing. So yeah, and we're, we're doing those again this year. We're going to add in a, like a sport and running and kind of playing basketball activity. Because we as not very sporty people, we often forget that the very sporty kids might want to do more. So we're going to create some more opportunities for them to run up and down and play with balls and. Yeah. So in our last kind of 10 minutes or so, I think maybe we should try and talk about what happens after the summer and then also mention computational adventures. So Erin, do you want to tell us about whelp? And then I'll talk about kind of teacher train post Whelp.

Yeah. So after students do the summer research program. Students who are, you know, super successful and they want to keep doing Wolfram stuff can be invited to join the Wolfram Emerging Leaders Program. The Wolfram Emerging Leaders Program. And I'm going to be focusing a little bit more on the high school version. We do also have an undergrad version that is more for, you know, students who've maybe already gone through our program a few times and done it as high schoolers or if they've done the summer school. But for the high schoolers, during their fall semester and slightly into the winter, they work on a project again in Wolfram language. But this time the goal is something more in depth. So something that's taking that longer period of time. And also it's a group project. So they're learning new skills of how to, you know, maybe they're tackling a project that in some ways is similar to what they worked on over the summer, but that was more focused on building those individual project skills. And so we're focusing a little bit more with, on learning how to work in a group and also working on a more in depth project. So they work together and they're much more. There's a little bit less hands on. We do have mentors for that program as well, but not quite as involved as over the summer. So also they're taking those individual being able to work on a project by themselves, skills they learn over the summer and actually applying them to a project where they don't have a mentor necessarily, 20, 24, 7 for them to ask for help. And they, at the end they put together a computational essay about their project and a video presentation. And then they finish up in January. So they work on it from September all the way through and finish up their essay end of January. And then we do a lovely graduation and they, their essays are posted on community and it's a great, great way for them to get some more, some more practice working on project stuff. And then we also do have workshops and guest lectures and things throughout the course of the semester. So they can either learn some skills. So Rory often leads one that is about like building your resume and like looking, you know, a lot of these kids are in junior or senior year, so they're looking forward to like putting together college applications and stuff. So we do some, some workshops on that kind of content and also some guest speakers that, you know, maybe speakers who weren't able to come over the summer and give lectures. We've had some very interesting folks come and give kind of more topic specific, you know, if the kids are super into machine learning, we'll have a machine learning expert come and give about like an hour long talk to them. Yeah. And then also then after they finished all that up, they could do TA training with Rory.

Yeah. So, and so we're having, we're having our group of kids at the moment doing TA training. And they, during that program, learn how to be a teaching assistant at the summer program. So they learn how to build social activities and how to make a good environment for students, but they also learn how to help students with academic problems. They learn how to help students structure their projects, help students figure out what to do. And so we teach them all of these skills. We teach them how to be a good kind of peer mentor. And then the, the capstone for that program is being a ta, being a teaching assistant over the summer. So we usually have 10 to 12, 10 to 15 teaching assistants at the summer program who are all alumni from the summer program. And then they've done the Pool for Emerging Leaders program and then they've done TA training and now they're TAs. So we kind of kept them the whole, the whole year. And then they are spectacular over the summer, we could not run the program without the, the TAs. They are amazing and they learn some really important vital skills that will be good for their resume, but also really good for just like normal life. So I, I was actually talking to somebody who's doing the TA program, TA training program right now who has just become a, a tutor in their, in their town. So now they're being paid to tutor people. And I'm like, I kind of taught you how to do that. So, you know, they kind of get to develop these skills that are really important. And you know, as you go through undergraduate and then into grad school, you know, you're going to be a T.A. probably if you're, if you're a kind of academic person, you're going to be taing at various university level classes. And so this is really good practice for that. And then several of our kids, you know, we've, we've been doing this for five, six years, have grown up and you know, started their undergraduate studies or in some cases even their graduate studies now and are now mentors at the high school programs. They got a kind of promotion. So our goal is always to, to kind of keep that, that cycle going of, of learning and development for our kids. Also, the Wolfram Middle School program is staffed entirely by high school alumni, high school program alumni. So they're maybe in their final year of high school or they're in, in undergrad. And that's a really positive thing. If you read about what works in education, one of the things that works really well is a thing called near peer teaching. So people who are a little bit older than you, a little bit more experienced, but not 35, and a sad old person sitting in the Corner like all 35 year olds are. And so you get to kind of connect on a bigger level with people closer to your age. So we've, we've kind of curated this, this program for them too. Yeah, it's, it's a joke that we make to the parents of kids applying to, applying to a summer program that we can, we can entertain your kid for, for 10 years with, with these programs. I did count it up once and I reckon we could, we could entertain a child for 10 years. Yeah. So we have a pretty great time with all of our song programs. Before we go, our last couple of minutes. Our kind of latest big, big adventure is the Computational Adventures program where we have a lovely curriculum of projects and activities for people of all ages to get involved in. So they, if you sign up to be a computational adventurer, then you'll be sent a, a big group of, of activities that are part Wolfram language tutorial, part mini project, part guided activity. And you have the opportunity to join our Discord server where we get to chat with all kinds of amazing people currently doing the programs and learn some Wolfram language, learn some computational thinking and create stuff like computational poetry and do some machine learning things, make some facial recognition classifiers. What else do we have? We have some computational music going on.

Some cryptography and code breaking stuff.

Yeah. Computationally analyzing Shakespeare, some real world data, all kinds of stuff, geography, history, science. And it's a really great way to learn more from language and a really great way to just expand your programming skills. And that's available for anybody of any age. It's also available for groups, you know, so if you run a homeschooling co op or a after school club or a library activity, then this is a really great curriculum for you to, for you to be guided by. And it's a lot of fun. I think we had a lot of fun building it. In my opinion. I had a pretty great time. Yeah. So we, we really invite you to go visit the Computational Adventures website and have a look at that. And if you have a middle schooler or high schooler or a secondary school student in the uk, then we would love to see their application. I'm pretty sure that our wonderful social media people are putting those links in your various chats and we would love to see then apply. All of those programs have open applications right now, so we'd love to see it. Yeah. Anything closing to say, Aaron?

I don't think so. I'm just hoping to hope to see some applications.

Perfect. Yeah, we always love seeing new people. Okay, fantastic. In that case, we hope that you have a wonderful rest of your day and we will see you soon.