On June 1st, last Friday, we were fortunate to have a guest speaker from the DIGITS Project. DIGITS is a STEM education program that pairs STEM professionals--individuals who work in science, technology, engineering and math-based companies--with sixth grade classes throughout the state to increase students' interest in math and science subjects and careers. Our speaker, Sandra Kogan, works for IBM as a software design engineer. She used a loaf of bread, butter and a knife (roll of paper towels, container and a plastic knife) to show us the importance of being able to translate an activity into computer instructions so that an activity can be performed correctly. Additionally, we learned what her interests were in middle school and how she ended up working at IBM. One activity we did was to categorize different jobs into four major categories: engineering, life sciences, computers/software/telecommunications and energy/environment. It was an hour well spent!
