From an electric bike and weather station to the basics of video production

The penultimate week of August was a very eventful one for more than 150 young minds. They were on the hunt for new skills in the fields of electrical engineering and multimedia. At the Innovative Technologies Summer Camp, they chose one of 14 workshops during the week to learn new skills and put them into practice by creating real applications and products. The aim of the summer camp is to give young people access to modern technologies and how to use them in a practical, innovative and fun way, and to encourage them to create their own products that they can use at home.

When learning new skills is combined with fun

The workshops were aimed at different age groups of students, from 4th grade primary school to 3rd year secondary school, and are based on collaborative, active learning that enriches participants with all the basic skills they need. Using modern technologies and with the help of experienced mentors, the participants then put their knowledge into practice, creating real products in one week that are useful at home, at school or at a party with friends. The number of returning participants, i.e. those who have attended the various workshops in previous years, and the fact that places fill up in less than an hour after registration opens, shows that the summer camp is a hit with children every year.

What did young tech enthusiasts do?

Young people chose from 14 different thematic workshops. In the Electric Vehicles workshop, they set out to build an electric bicycle, and on the last day they tested it by riding it around the car park. The RoboXY workshop introduced participants to basic robotic concepts and they also tried their hand at building apps with the participating robots. They built their own planar robot manipulator, soldered an electronic circuit and learned basic control principles. In the workshop "On a virtual 4D trip", they learned how to solder, program and 3D model, skills that always come in handy. In the LEGO Stormtroopers workshop, participants designed, built and programmed mobile systems that were able to carry out a given task. At the end, they also competed with their systems in a friendly competition.

The participants of the Pirates with a Camera workshop produced an entertaining and informative TV show, where they were mainly in charge of scripting, recording and live streaming. The live broadcast was also watched by parents at the end of the camp, who were impressed by the performance. Participants in the Make Your Own Video Tailor workshop learned how to use video editing tools and create graphics. They used the knowledge they gained to help the Pirates produce an entertaining and informative TV show. Participants in the 4D Sculptors are Emperors workshop learned how to use Blender. They created their own model, painted it and then animated it. Finally, they exported the animations as a video, which was broadcast during an entertainment and information TV show by Pirates and Tailors.

Future Internet was a workshop where young people learned about the basics of the Internet of Things and programming. Together they built a smart weather station that sent data to the internet. In the Sensors in an Electronic World workshop, they built a water level gauge using a pressure sensor and an Arduino module. For this purpose, they used a relative pressure sensor, which allows the measurement of a water height of 1 m. In the From Electrons to Stars workshop, participants learned about the concepts of radiation and energy, which we encounter in our daily lives. They built and calibrated a metal detector on their own and used their prior knowledge of physics and mathematics to simulate the formation of lightning. In the Sunny, Cloudless workshop, participants soldered a circuit board with two temperature, humidity and pressure sensors, a WiFi development board and external components. They built their own weather station and learned about a mobile app that makes it easy to integrate projects like this. In the Scratchmasters workshop, participants learned the basics of block programming in CODE, SCRATCH and MICRO:BIT programming languages. They learned how to draw, use loops, conditional statements, messages and cloning.

In addition to educational and fun workshops, participants also went on several excursions to high-tech companies and institutions: Zavod 404, Nuclear Reactor in Podgorica, RTV Slovenia, SŽ Towing and Technique, Lumenia, Grah Lighting, Hella Saturnus, ARSO, Cosylab, MakerLab, Outfit7 ... Those who stayed at the Vič Student Residence during the camp also enjoyed sports and board games in the afternoon and evening.