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Seeking to Boost STEM Learning in PHL Schools, PCCY Announces Turing Tech Grants Recipients
Child advocates aim to bring hi-tech learning into classrooms and inspire tomorrow’s tech heroes
Филадельфия (May 1, 2018) – Today, the region’s leading child advocacy organization was joined by Mayor Jim Kenney as they announced the inaugural recipients of a new grants program designed to improve technology education for students in grades K-8.
“These technology grants will have a profound impact on students who would otherwise not have the learning opportunities to acquire vital skills, like coding,” said Mayor Kenney. “I commend PCCY and the grant winners for promoting more participation and gender equality in technology programs. There could very well be a future headliner for Philly Tech Week sitting in a Turing Tech Grant classroom.”
The PCCY Turing Tech Grants Project, named after the founder of computer science Alan Turing, will provide $10,000 in grants to Philadelphia public schools so that teachers will have the tools they need, particularly in support of coding and robotics learning.
The winning schools of a 2018 Turing Tech Grant are Julia De Burgos Elementary School, Samuel Gompers School, John B. Kelly Elementary School, Laura W. Waring Public School.
“The fundamentals for students are reading, writing, arithmetic, and computer science,” said serial entrepreneur and prominent tech education evangelist Bob Moul, who, along with Coded By Kids, advised the nonprofit on their new program. “Groups like PCCY are not only shining a light on the need for greater tech ed in the district but actually making it happen for students.”
Taking inspiration from blockbuster film Black Panther, PCCY established an additional $250 award for a school that make boosting the coding skills of girls a priority with the Shuri Prize, named after the eponymous superhero’s genius sister—a hero in her own right.
For their proposal to create and equip a Lego Robotics club “to specifically promote computer science for young women at our bilingual school,” according to lead math teacher Andrew Guyon, Julia De Burgos Elementary was awarded the 2018 Shuri Prize.
Awardees designed their proposals around the following approved tech learning tools: Sphero SPRK Robot Kits; Chromebooks; LEGO Mindstorms Education EV3 Core Sets, and IPads.
PCCY Turing Tech Grants are being funded by proceeds from the organization’s Minecraft gaming tournament and STEM festival that took place last September.
At the today’s media event, PCCY also announced that this year’s Minecraft event, called STEMCraft, will take place at School of the Future on Saturday, October 6.
“We know we have talented and dedicated teachers who would love to bring new tools into their classrooms because they know how their students flourish when given the opportunity,” said Brian Rankin, PCCY Board Chair. “It’s only fitting that our STEM event is powering this exciting new grant and we’re looking forward to seeing what students do with them.”
For fifteen years, PCCY’s much-lauded Проект Пикассо has distributed arts education mini-grants for innovative projects in schools across the city, offering quality arts learning for students who would otherwise go without.
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