November 20, 2023
Our City Academy 6th graders were one of only five schools selected to participate in National STEM Day,
sponsored by World Wide Technology. It was a full day of learning, listening and being actively engaged
in exploring the various career opportunities within the realm of STEM.
We watched proudly as our 6th grade scholars participated in an icebreaker that helped them to gain
insight into the world of consulting. We were blown away by the amount of knowledge and their ability
to contribute ideas to the Senior Software Engineer Manager as they developed their very own app.
They continued to demonstrate an impressive eye when they met with the Quality Assurance
department. In a short amount of time, they were able to “de-bug” a program by identifying misspelled
words, ingredients that were not for human consumption, mathematical errors, the ability to enter a
credit card that was expired and many more “bugs.”
While meeting with technicians from the Data Center, they saw images of what massive data centers
looked like and got an idea of what the “cloud” really is, when sending sensitive information. Students
were also exposed to how quickly a password can be figured out and the best characters to use to
prevent your password from being so easily accessed.
Marketing is important to brand any organization and the ability to capture great photos, make a viral
post and of course staying on trend is important. City Academy scholars were tasked with coming up
with a few of their own that could be utilized and according to the Marketing Manager they were
definitely on point.
One of the highlights of the day was the Cybersecurity breakout session. They were divided into teams
who competed to unscramble words and received a lesson about each.
This was a day filled with excitement, learning and plenty of interactive opportunities. The entire World
Wide Technology team was welcoming and happy to share their expertise with our scholars and we are
all still raving about the day!
By Kimberli J. Wilson