This Fall, students from the Florida State University College of Communication and Information continued their weekly after school program at R. Frank Nims Middle School in Tallahassee.  The project started last Spring as an outreach event for STARS Alliance.  Students from the School of Information IT Leadership class and members of Community Outreach Group (COG), have been visiting Nims Middle to introduce Arduinos, programming, music theory and circuitry.

The project is coordinated by STARS Alliance student, Melissa Davis, now in her second year of her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering.  She created each lesson for this 10-week Arduino music and light show including choosing the music and teaching the students how many beats a specific note has, to teaching how to program the music notes. With the help of volunteers, students were able to successfully program their complete song. “It was amazing to work with these students this past semester and see their progress as the weeks went on,” Melissa said. “I hope the volunteers and I had as much of an impact on the students as they had on us.”

Jonathon Zayas, senior IT student and President of Community Outreach Group said, “The opportunity to work with children and hopefully instill a passion in technology in them is an opportunity I am really grateful for. I love sharing my knowledge with the younger generation and hopefully inspiring them to pursue careers in IT.” Jonathon worked closely with Melissa to help the students understand the concepts of programming and will begin his own after school technology program starting in January at Buck Lake Elementary in Tallahassee.  Jonathan was consistently joined by Zachary Patterson, Rhiannon Jacobson, and Morgan Herbert on their weekly visits to the school.