K-12 students build cameras from scratch at Virginia Tech's Imagination Camp

My name is Savannah, and I'm participating in the imagination camp. At the beginning of the class, we started talking about soldering and what we will make. We're starting on making our digital camera. By the end of the week, we will be able to take our camera home and take pictures with it. I most enjoy the soldering class because it was introduced to me by this camp 'cause I never did soldering before, and I really like it, and I will enjoy doing it in the future. I believe that the objective of the camp is to gather more interest for young students in STEM and for them to explore their opportunities of what exactly are the different facets of STEM and expanding whatever they may already know, and learning that STEM isn't just the heart engineering, but it also incorporates some kind of artistic and creative elements to create an end product that isn't only functional, but it's also aesthetically pleasing. We do have a few returning students this year. A lot of the returning students are in a way flying through our project. What we've noticed a lot is that the students who are returning students help out the others. So the other people at their table whenever they're having trouble, whether that be with soldering or wiring, or if their LED isn't facing the right way, we notice that they're always kind of their first line of defense in a way. You definitely see them become more collaborative with one another and truly understand what it means to be collaborative, learning about each of the individual campers personalities. They're all s so very different, and it's very exciting to see that they are our future. That's probably one of the most exciting things about this camp.