IT-Adventures: Making IT Fun
The IT-Adventures program, which is in its third year, is dedicated to increasing interest in and awareness of information technology (IT) among high school students using inquiry-based learning focused around three content areas: cyber defense, robotics, and game design programming. IT-Adventures uses fun and informal methods to present educational materials to students, makes equipment available with which they can experiment and provides contact with IT professionals for guidance in their IT exploration.
The capstone event for students who participate in the program is a two-day competition called the IT-Olympics will be held April 23-24, 2010 in Hilton Coliseum on the Iowa State University campus. This year 500 students representing 44 high schools are competing. The two-day event is also a celebration of IT in Iowa. The floor of Hilton will be lined with booths from IT companies and colleges showcasing good IT career options available in Iowa and across the nation.
We have 44 schools with a total of 97 teams that have signed up.
30 cyber security teams
36 games design teams
31 robotics teams
Key to the success of the IT-Adventures program is our partnership with corporations and businesses in Iowa and across the nation. Presently, we are recruiting businesses to participate in the event in several ways.
First, we would like to invite your company or personally to be included in IT-Olympics, April 23 & 24 in Hilton Coliseum. Last year IT-Olympics gave away prizes to participants that were donated by companies and private individuals. This was a very big hit with the kids and would like do it again this year. If you have anything “cool” that you would like to donate or give a donation towards purchasing prizes we would really appreciate your support and we will add your company and logo to our program and the running tickertape in Hilton Coliseum as a contributor.
Second, we would like to offer you a free corporate booth at the IT-Olympics to showcase your company. The booth space would be open from 1-6:00 p.m. on Friday and from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Saturday. While the booth space, table, skirting and electricity are free to you for the asking, as a non-profit organization, we would gratefully accept a $250 donation for the booth space if you feel the time you get with the students and the interaction with the parents, teachers, counselors and IT professionals is valuable. We will use the money from booth space to purchase prizes that we will give away to the students via a drawing during the closing ceremony on Saturday.
Third, we are asking for your employees to volunteer to help run the events. Many employees of Iowa IT companies already volunteer as mentors for high schools, but we need additional individuals to volunteer
their time and talents at IT-Olympics help support staff to run the event. Volunteer activities can include
judging events, helping run the events, working the registration tables, serving pancakes on Saturday
morning and other opportunities.
And, finally, since the program has no cost to the students or high schools, we are requesting help with
financial sponsorship of the event. While we have received grants from the Iowa Department of Economic
Development and the Iowa Math and Science Education Partnership, the event at Hilton costs just over
$75,000. This doesn’t include the educational materials, the robotic equipment, the program administrative
costs or the teacher education component. A contribution of any size would be gratefully accepted.
If you are interested in helping with IT-Olympics, you can register as a volunteer and/or register a
company for your free display booth or corporate sponsorship on our web site.
If you have additional questions, please feel free to contact me at dougj@iastate.edu or info@it-adventures.org.
Sincerely,
Doug Jacobson
