Observations from the Governor's School Sun Day
Overall, it was a very enlightening day for all involved. The students were genuinely excited to be there and feedback, both formal & informal, was very positive. We could have used more time to converse outside of the sessions but time was limited. From my sessions, I will say that I was very impressed with the students. They gave real thought to the presentations and asked probing and detailed questions and they had some innovative ideas to offer.
The puzzle I had put together was a big success. In each session, the students solved the puzzle amazingly quickly and in several different ways. Most of the students solved it by converting it to Hex and then mapping it to the ASCII table. One student solved it by noticing that 2 of the letters were the same and plugging in different vowels until he came up with the word. The one funny thing is that while they all came up with the word "Divide", none of them actually said "Digital Divide" which is what I was going for. They think so analytically that the whole digital part which we were talking about in the session didn't register. But, I will say that these students are really bright and it's not a cliche to say that they are the ones who will shape the next generation of technology!
To sum up, the day was an overwhelming success and I would love to participate in this again next year and other similar volunteer opportunities.
