UAEU School Summer Camp ends

The UAEU School Summer Camp, an initiative by Al Bayt Mitwahid, concluded on Wednesday 8 August 2018. The initiative, powered by Google and organized by Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK) and United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), aimed to accelerate the science and technology progress in the UAE, provide students with the opportunity to acquire advanced IT and self-learning skills, and introduce them to the latest global discoveries in this area.

The 10-day camp’s activities started on 30 July at UAEU Science and Innovation Park, with the participation of 40 male and female school students aged 13-17 supervised by a number of trainers specialized in ICT applications.

The summer camp workshops focused on providing students with the necessary scientific and technical innovation skills and tools to carry out projects and develop innovations using 3D printing, laser cutting and smart sewing machines. It also gave students the chance to use various 3D design programs such as Thinker Cad, Ink Scape, and other specialized programs.

In the Application Factory Workshop, students learned simple programming, website building and modifying, and mobile apps development in a simple way using graphical interfaces to develop projects, models and game.

"What I learned from transforming ideas into products and services through the stages of thinking, planning and cooperative implementation will help strengthen my future vision, especially in the industry where ideas can be applied through artificial intelligence and programming," said student Sarah Al Baloushi. “I also acquired collective thinking and teamwork skills to accomplish projects on time."

Lamis Khadr, another student participant in the camp, added, "3D printing and laser cutting are a new technologies that I have learned about in one of the camp’s workshops and they helped me to implement new ideas. Teamwork skills also enabled me to explore new ideas that can be used for multiple different field projects as well as mobile application programming".