GEMS 2004 Summer Workshop

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications sponsored a GEMS workshop this summer for 65 girls on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on June 29 and 30. 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.

Here's what the girls said:

I liked working with the Squeak program and being able to make things move around and do different things.

The computers are cool and I really enjoyed the bunny on the squeak program.

I loved squeak. It was so fun making things come to life!

You could make the program maybe a week or two instead of two days.

I like how you can use the access grid to talk to people far away. It gives young women to see the different careers in their own prospective.

This camp is the best ever

What I liked: Hmmmmmm. I can't pick only one. I liked every thing!

I loved learning about Squeak! It was really fun learning about all of the ways you could use it. I never knew a program like that could have so many things to do on it.

Overall I thought GEMS was great! It really was more than I expected. I'm looking forward to coming to another workshop like this next year

Please, Use mouses next time. Actual MOUSES for computers not tap mouses!

My favorite part was getting to use our own laptops. I love making the bunny move and blow up.

I am so glad you held this program and thank you!

Thanks for doing this program!!! I really like the access grid.

GEMS was a very interesting program. It helped me to think more about becoming a math or sciences expert besides becoming a English expert or something like that. Although I have other jobs I am more interested in, this opened a new door for me into math and science. The program I enjoyed most was SQUEAK. It was fun.

I really liked the SQEUAK activity, because I have never experienced this thing! I really liked making the energizer bunny move; I have never done this in my whole entire life. I also liked learning about scientists over the country. This has really helped me to know about new technologys in this world!

I LOVE MATH AND SCIENCE !!!!!

I think that GEMS is a great workshop I would like to attend here again some other time. We get to meet people from all over the world like from Boston the things that they tell us are very interesting just because they tell us about their lives...