Perryville Middle Schoolers share their experiences from SXSWedu

Looking for an insider’s view of what happened at SXSWedu? Why not ask some of the event’s youngest presenters: youth from Perryville Middle School in Perryville, Md.
The students, who participated in the SXSWedu Tech Ed Summit alongside other organizations from Baltimore such as Code in the Schools and FutureMakers, taught summit attendees how to use 3D-scanning techniques and tools.
They were a crowd favorite, catching the attention of both keynote speakers: Lynda Weinman, founder of Lynda.com and Stephanie Santoso, Senior Advisor for Making at the White House Office of Science and Technology. They also received an honorable mention in the White House Film Festival for their work with the Perpetual Innovation Fund.
Here is what the kids from Perryville had to share about their participation in the event and how it sparked new questions about transforming education in the United States:

Cooper Wilcox, 8th grader:

We were there to inform and teach people about 3D scanning. This is pretty much exactly what is sounds like. We can take a XBox Kinect camera and scan your body. Then we can process that video in an application to be able to create a 3D model of you and what you would look like in a video game. After that, we can export your file into another application and 3D print YOU! It was really great to show people what we have learned!

Alexandrea Koons, 8th grader:

At the summit, we met Lynda Weinman, the founder of Lynda.com. She was so insightful about ways to improve the common school curriculum. Something that piqued my interest was when she talked about today’s girl youth population and how they don’t find school as fun as boys do. I find it very true and it really made me think of ways I can increase the love of school for girls in my school. Another person I met was Stephanie Santoso, the Senior Advisor on Making for the White House who gave the second keynote! She talked about entrepreneurship and really opened my eyes to new ways I can use imagination and creativity to develop ideas to help my community.

Vincent Gugliotta, 8th grader:

SxSWedu Tech Summit made us think about ways that we could change our education system. I had personally thought that the best way to change the education system was to put up less emphasis on letter grades and more on smaller goals that children will want to strive to. This event had made us realize just how much it would benefit us all to have these ideas put into play, and how important it is that we have all these people willing to come out and explain ways to try and help learning become something fun and challenging.

If you missed the “Pay It Forward” submission to the White House Student Film Festival highlighting the 3D printing work of Perryville Middle’s Destination Imagination Team, check it out here: