GEMS 2005 Spring Workshop

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications sponsored a GEMS workshop this spring for 30 girls on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on every Thursday though the month of April. Girls in grades 6-8 learned simple programming and modeling tools, spoke with scientists about their work using the Access Grid (a high speed videoconferencing tool), and participated in hands-on activities. Click here to view the spring agenda.

Here's what the girls said:

just leave a little more time at th end of explaining things for us to build the circuits because my group didnt have quite enough time. Also wires with aligator clips might work a lot better because my partner and i also had a little trouble with connections.  i think that this material was appropriate for our age group and we had already covered most of it in school already.i dont really know the topics that could be covered so idon't really have any oppinion on it.

I liked it when we worked in partners because we made new friends. You could do one of those excersizes where we all learn each others names what school we're from.

I liked making the circuit. Make sure that everybody understands what we are doing, maybe more helpers.

I'd say my favorite part was making the circuts. I hadn't done that in a long time. :)  I had a lot of fun....

i liked the teamwork involved in the circuit workshop  i really liked the math invoved in the workshop

Make the groups bigger becuase it was hard with just two people but I liked learningto build more than one circut

It was fun and hands on.

I lit small bulbs.

i liked the squeak workshop but i havn't had a chance to play around with squeak much so i only have one thing to suggust, i went to a different squeak workshop and i really liked how they did it .They let us play around with the program but they also had a way to put their screen onto our screen and show us what they were doing but the projector did that for you.  i really liked the squeak workshop and i hope that you will let us play around with it some more some time at GEMS.

I like that you can make all of the connections. But, the con about it is that I thought it went really fast.  I love the workshops!

I liked the squeek workshop it was fun. I don't think there was anything you could do to improve it.

My favorite part was... er.. I liked the Moodle best. I think it's a lot of fun... I myself would've liked to move quicker, but I can understand that there were to many people to move quicker.  Squeak was fun, and I'm taking another camp on it this summer.

I think that the Squeek workshop was well done, to me Squeek is interesting because you can control the souroundngs.

I thought it was fun and I think that it would of been fun if the light bulbs would have been bigger  I have been having a good time and I love working with computers.

I like that we get to go to the internet,to improve you should have more classes so you can go slower.  It is fun you get to meet new people that is whyi like it.

i like the ciriculum  i really like the teachers

I would show us how to do more things  i enjoyed the workshop becuase we didn' do it during the summer

This was very fun. I like how the things were explained carefully.

It was fun but you shuld try to give us a little more time to finis some things  I liked he brain in 3d the most

I liked how just putting in numbers make something as interesting as the heart design  Teh brain kicked bum.

I like it that we can move it around and turn it into 3D. Can we get some new topics?  Could you try and go through the instructions a little slower?

I liked seeing the things in 3-d. Nothing really.

I liked the brain part.

I liked the brain and the heart projects the best. I think that the program is fine just the way it is.  I think that it was fun but I would like the workshops to be longer and I wish that you would give us more time to complete the steps.

This program was very excitng an interesting and different with the 3d program i really like it

I liked estimating the numbers for the heart and then seeing the fineshed products

I liked that we could make our own characters and create different outfits. I can't think of anything to improve it.  None

I liked making the fish and espically enjoyed exploring on my own  I enjoyed it becuase it was new to me

I liked creating thing for our eniroments best  I like the OpenCroquet overall a LOT. I would love like three hours to go through and explore everthing. :)

I learned a lot from this workshop.I think

I really liked making the fish 3D.  I thought that this workshop was rally fun and I would like to use it again in the summer.

Everything in this workshop was perfect, we weren't that cramped on time and eerything was explained well, I can't think of anything in this workshop that would need to be revised

I like the tree burning thing and Alice world it was fun  I have a lot of fun here

What I liked best about this workshop was that there were diferent worlds. I think that something you could do to make the program better would be to take us through it more slowly.  I think that OpenCroquet was really fun and interesting.

I liked how they had the different relms and stuff. I think that there should be a better way to move the girl. Ad tha everytime you click the box comes up! th was fustrating.

I would really like to move Alice around more easily, but other than that it was really cool.  I really enjoyed doing Open Croquet. It was cool going around to the other worlds too.

i liked the program a lot and i dont have anyhing that i would suggust to improvethe program  none

What I liked most in the OpenCroquet Workshop was making the fish.  Moving Alice was kind of hard at first but it was easy when I got the hang of it

I liked the part when u make a fish.You could add more worlds.  Give us more time on things.

I liked it It was very fun.  Great Workshop!

i liked it. i liked that squeak was part of opencroquet. i liked that we had time to explore.  none.

nothingbecause it was fun