Aidan and Megan Flick could have spent their spring break hanging out at the mall, catching a movie or spending time with friends at a coffee shop. Or maybe they could have whiled away the week by zoning out in front of a computer or TV screen.
But this year, the Flick sisters decided to turn techie. Instead of playing video games, they learned how to make them. Instead of listening to music, they actually composed songs. They also built battling toothbrush robots and took apart a computer tower, just for kicks.
The Flicks were among 21 students from the east metro who gathered at the Ramsey County Library in Maplewood earlier this month for the annual Teen Tech Camp, a two-day tech workshop where students in grades 6-12 could hone their tech skills and have a little fun, too.
Teen Tech Camp, now in its third year, is a collaboration between the library and the Educational Equity Alliance, which is a collaborative program between the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale and Mahtomedi school districts. It is geared toward students who are interested in technology programs and exposes them to possible career ideas they might not learn about in school.
"Everybody is so focused on sports these days," said Scott Galeazzi, a parent from Mahtomedi. "It's nice to see these kinds of programs that get kids educated in technology."
Amy Boese, a teen services librarian and the program director, said the library is a "third space" outside of the home and school where students can feel like they belong to a community.
"We want them to see that the library is not just books," Boese said. "It's a place where they can interact with each other and exchange ideas."
The tech camp's seemingly simple activities are geared to teaching engineering skills, computer programing and website creation that Boese said gives the students the ability to become digital entrepreneurs.