CAITE Highlight
Bristol Community College Spring Activities
Bristol Community College (BCC) has been bustling with activity this semester. Activities included college tours for middle school students and a programing contest as well as a college fair and a computer literacy course.
Bristol started off the semester with a College Tech Fair. Students from a variety of high schools were brought in to learn about computing at BCC on January 13. This year the fair featured a seminar on computer forensics, a round table with alumni and a careers discussion sponsored by Microsoft. In addition, college officials talked about admissions and financial aid, and the CIS department talked about the options available within the department. BCC has also been running a computer literacy class targeted at unemployed adults and adults working toward their GED. The class lasts for 6 weeks (last class on 4/27).
Bristol CC's partnership with Citizen's School in New Bedford continued this spring during the week of March 16, spring vacation at BCC. Students from New Bedford middle schools attended a class on logic with Alice and programming with Game Maker taught by BCC students. The 165 students worked on forensics problems with these programs and then broke into four groups to take an orientation tour about attending college. This effort around working with Citizen's Schools to get their students thinking about college was coordinated by Rose Ferro (adjunct BCC faculty) and Christina Janzekovich (BCC student).
On March 18, BCC held their annual high school programming contest. Fifty high school students were given a variety of computer forensics problems to be solved by working alone or in teams. The students used a variety of programming languages available in the BCC labs but on only one computer per team. As they completed the problems, teachers and advisers were available to talk with them about related careers.
Later in the week, about 45 students traveled to BCC to work on forensics, LOGO and Alice from Morton and Kuss middle schools in Fall River. "The students were absolutely absorbed as they worked in groups to solve the forensics problem and then on their own with LOGO and Alice," said CAITE co-PI Priscilla Grocer, who coordinated the event. "The teacher from Morton got back to me to tell me that the next day two girls approached her individually and told her they had gone home and talked with their parents and decided on the career path they wanted to pursue and it was definitely computer forensics. [Computer forensics] was challenging because it involved problem solving and creativity and was doing a good thing."
