As the start of the 2022-23 school year approaches, some exciting opportunities for kidOYO students are coming to life. For many years, kidOYO has built learning opportunities for advanced learners interested in accessing opportunities not inherently part of most school experiences. Whether live and direct on University campuses, or in partnership with leading school districts via our platform at OYOclass.com, kidOYO mentors have constructed focused pathways for self-led student navigation in the direction of their personal interests.
Artificial intelligence, machine learning, visual and decision informatics, virtual reality, augmented reality, big data, security and many more such topics represent learning paths that are typically only accessible by a small portion of our population engaged in high level studies, or work at major corporations. As a result, the National Science Foundation, in partnership with CEWIT Chief Scientist at Stony Brook University Dr. Arie Kaufman, as well as a National + International consortium of Universities and Corporate partners has inaugurated a program designed to pursue the goal of "Democratizing AI" via educational outreach and applied access to state-of-the-art technical resources and mentors.
Our organization at kidOYO is leading outreach on this endeavor, and as a founder of kidOYO, I have joined the Board of this program in hopes of influencing the growth of this opportunity for more advanced learners in high school CS programs. Given our structure as a non-profit public benefit organization building technical systems and services for our communities, mentoring service has always been a fundamental piece of the equation for our leading learners of all ages. Students in Middle School, High School and University CS programs have served as student-mentors for many years, putting their technical skills into the context of people, where communication, empathy and community service elevate people over systems.
This summer, our first two (2) exceptional student-mentors were selected to participate in this new High School internship program, working with Dr. Kaufman and PhD mentors at CEWIT/Stony Brook Department of Computer Science to build applications used in some exciting research on campus while enrolled in the CSE 487 class. The technical specs of hardware involved are impressive in their own right, with innovations such as the Reality Deck, Silo, and AI systems resourced with 180+ GPU cluster (RTX6000) with 3 petaflops of processing capacity in use. (Nvidia has stated it is the largest in existence at time of build) IBM, Zebra, Softheon, Northrop Grumman, Zblock, MedPod, and more 'Industry Partners' are already involved in the work, and students will even participate in presentations to organizations such as the US Department of the Navy.
Our student interns will have the opportunity to work with both hardware and software systems, and will produce functional applications based on their own interests related to CEWIT research, culminating in a semester final 'Demo Day' showcasing the results of their work. Given the standard kidOYO experience building projects and representing personal work via 'Demo Days' for many years, our initial two student interns are quite adept and will be well versed in the learning experience producing their final demonstrations.
As this NSF funded program is designed to last for many years, future students will be selected from our community, both direct students and students enrolled in partnering school districts. (Request Info) A major component of selection for this program beyond academic prowess will be based on the service efforts of prospective High School interns, their ability to communicate complex information to others, and their willingness to take on the aggressive goal defined into this program by "Democratizing AI" access.
Whether working in the largest non-city school district in New York State, disadvantaged rural communities, or in leading districts with massive support for computer science engineering education, our goal at kidOYO will be to work with teachers, administrative leaders, and directly with students as engaged mentors to identify students that represent great investments into the goal of this program. Already, student-mentor feedback in the first year of this program is filled with excitement for the kind of learning work being engaged, and we look forward to more such opportunity finding its way into our communities of service.
I am thankful for the partnership with Dr. Ari Kaufman, the namesake of the mentor award program now entering its 9th year of existence, having issued monetary scholarship awards in excess of half-a-million dollars to date to volunteer mentors who provide exceptional service to students of all ages. His leadership as a massive supporter of our work, whether in his prior role as the Chairman of the Department of Computer Science at SBU, or as Chief Scientist at CEWIT, has been invaluable in opening up opportunities for aspiring students and classrooms. We look forward to our continued work in this newest endeavor.
@Dev - Founder/Mentor at kidOYO/OYOclass.com
