Members of the Software team at Centennial East helped coach young programmers at the Raspberry Pi Youth Coding Camp at Grand Valley State University’s Innovation Design Center.
Gentex volunteers helped middle school students explore various coding tasks on the small computers, from working with sensors and displays to programming drones across obstacle courses.
Sarah Schneider, Software Requirements Engineer at Gentex, ran a drone programming station using block coding language to control the behavior of drones. While her work at Gentex involves developing software requirements based on systems requirements, she volunteered at the camp to assist with the Pis, helping to develop coding and cooperation skills that could lead to future STEM careers for students.
“It was really rewarding to see how excited the kids would get when their program worked correctly,” she said. “It was also really fun to see them solve problems and work together to figure out how to get drones to behave how they wanted."
Pujitha Mannaru, Lead Machine Learning Engineer, helped students with coding fundamentals at therobot car station, where students used the Scratch coding platform to navigate obstacle courses.
"The camp was not only a great venue for beginner coders but also provided a platform to foster collaboration and teamwork while introducing problem-solving and critical-thinking skills," she said. "I hope we sparked an interest in them that makes future STEM activities both approachable and enjoyable."