Our mission to “Build South Florida Into a Tech Hub” includes our next generation of techies. We aim to create a positive environment that promotes tech, coding, engineering, and robotics education.
To further aid our mission, South Florida Tech partnered with the Palm Beach County School District, Broward County Public School District, and Path to College to organize the “Summer Webinar Series.”
Path to College has taken on the mission of securing the acceptance of low-income, high-achieving students into top-tier universities and helping those who are willing and ready to help themselves, empowering our community’s best and brightest regardless of their race or financial background.
The “Summer Webinar Series” was geared towards current highschool students, those who have recently graduated, and their teachers. We hosted five webinars to share tools, resources, and advice about various topics.
‘Career Paths in Tech’
We discussed the wide-ranging careers in the tech industry, as well as the varying paths to obtain them. In particular, our guest speakers presented their respective journeys through the tech industry and provided advice on how to have and maintain a successful career in tech.
- Meggie Soliman | Director Strategic Innovation @ DSS
- Todd Albert | Founder @ Boca Code
- Kathy Underwood | Director, Data Analytics @ Levatas
‘Video Conferencing Tips & Tricks’
With the quick shift to remote work in 2020, video conferencing has become essential for teams to communicate on a day-to-day basis. In light of this current trend of video conferencing, experts in remote working provided tips and tricks of Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meets.
- Pat La Morte | Account Executive of Education @ Zoom
- Barkha Herman | Senior Cloud Solutions Architect @ Microsoft
- George Whitaker | Director of Information Security and Cloud Architecture @ PGA of America
‘Best Practices for Learning Remotely’
Online classes are becoming more prevalent in today’s society. Both students and teachers need to be prepared for the shift from in-person to online classes. This discussion focused on teaching the basic tools to keep organized, communication techniques, and best practices for learning/working remotely. We learned some useful productivity hacks.
- Adi Raina | Principal Consultant @ Improving
- Scott Townsend | Vice President of Sales @ PeakActivity
- Cathy Miron | President & CEO @ eSilo
‘Engagement Through Gamification’
Enrich your classes and increase student engagement through gamification. What is gamification? Gamification is “the application of game-like mechanics to non-game entities to encourage a specific behavior.” We learned how you can motivate and inspire students by changing the way they view learning.
- Dr. Rik Bair | Associate Dean of the Distance Learning Institute @ University of Miami
‘Work Based Learning’
The best way to learn is by “doing”. Work based learning is the students’ chance to gain a new skill or perspective that can’t be taught in the classroom setting. We introduced work based learning from the perspective of the company — what they expect students to learn, why work-based learning is so important, and the different opportunities available to students.