The UConn School of Computing would like to offer a one-week AI summer camp to rising 8th - 10th graders to provide earlier exposure to Artificial Intelligence (AI) foundations, concepts, tools, and programming, which provide a platform for developing logic, abstraction, and computational thinking. The global job market is being shaped by AI, and early literacy helps students make informed academic and career choices as AI becomes central to many industries.
This is a forward-thinking initiative aimed for students at a formative age where curiosity is high and self-belief in technical subjects can be nurtured. Introducing AI concepts early to students demystifies AI, makes AI feel approachable, and builds a foundation of confidence in STEM fields as they transition to high school. Further, the summer camp will build student awareness of AI's impact at the societal, local, and personal scales, and promote thoughtful digital citizenship.
Most middle school and high school curricula do not yet include dedicated AI components, despite AI being the most transformative technology today. This AI summer camp supplements traditional instruction and will help as a pipeline to high school computer science or robotics programs.
This summer camp day program will be organized by a group of volunteers (faculty members: Prof Jinbo Bi and Derek Aguiar, and a few PhD student instructors), so the program is free of charge to students. However, if families can donate funding (maximally $250, any amount may help), it will help this program to cover facility cost, and make it more accessible to communities and more sustainable in a long run.
All camp staff will be approved by UConn office of Protection for Minors with training so they are authorized adults to interact with students. A few legal forms (e.g., UConn Liability Waiver, Emergency Contact) will need to be signed by parent(s) or legal guardian(s) of the students after the registration process is over.
Most of the program will consist of classes and activities in the Information Technology and Engineering Building (in its computer lab on the first floor), but several activities will also take place in Engineering and Science Building's robotics labs. Students need to bring their own lunch or funds to purchase lunch from UConn Student Union. Lunches will be chaperoned.
We are committed to sustaining an inclusive environment and making any accommodations necessary for students to have a positive learning experience.
Important Information
Registration Deadline:
- July 18th, 2025 (The lab capacity is of 30 students)
Dates:
- July 28th - August 1st, 2025
Time:
- 8:30-9AM - sign-in
- 9AM-12noon - morning sessions
- 12noon-1PM - lunch
- 1PM-4PM - afternoon sessions
Pricing:
- Free!
Topics Planned
- Fundamentals of artificial intelligence
- Introduction to machine learning
- Basic programming in Python
- Applications of large language models
- AI limitations, ethics, and social impacts
The material will not assume any background knowledge beyond the standard middle school math curriculum.
Tentative Schedule
Day 1
- Introductory games
- Lesson: Basic concepts in AI
- Activity: AI bingo
- Demonstration: Using Python to control a computer
Day 2
- Lesson: Randomized algorithms and AI safety
- Activities: Hacking ChatGPT
- Activities: Try programming with Scratch!
- Demonstration and Game: Tour UConn's Autonomous Driving Lab
Day 3
- Lesson: Introduction to machine learning
- Activity (game): Human-operated regression on the student union Mall
- Lesson: Introduction to machine learning (continued)
- Demonstrations: machine learning models
- Social event: (movie watching)
Day 4
- Lesson: Supervised/Unsupervised machine learning
- Activity: Train your own machine learning model
- Demonstration and Game (cont): Tour UConn's Autonomous Driving Lab
Day 5
- Lesson: Neural networks basics
- Demonstration: Neural network visualizations
- Activity: Train your own machine learning model (continued)
- Social event: (ice cream social)
Demo of autonomous car prototype
As an example, one of the events is for students to tour the autonomous driving lab and test run autonomous prototype car. Below is a video provided by a high school research team who performed research on the prototype cars two years back.
