Over 100 Students Participate in the IITAGH /C@deFest/ at Clements High School

HOUSTON: On a bright Saturday morning, over 100 students checked in at the registration desk at Clements High School for the IITAGH /C@deFest.  The event hosted by the IIT Alumni of Greater Houston (IITAGH) and Clements High School focused on teaching students how to code a website in a day. The students came in, met with their friends, settled down at the tables in main area, and opened up their laptops ready to begin.  Anne Beckman, coordinator of the Global Studies Academy (GSA) coordinator at Clements High School welcomed all the students.  She introduced Pratish Kanani, President of IITAGH, who spoke for a few minutes about graduating from an engineering university where he learned about problem solving and structured thinking, concepts that they would learn during the day.  Pratish then introduced Anand Chauhan, the instructor for the day, who walked the students through the fundamentals about computers, the differences between the internet and the web, how to use HTML tags and JavaScript code to create webpages, and how to integrate multiple webpages into websites.  Anand finally walked the students through how to upload their website to the internet.

There were 15 volunteers from the Clements Computer Science Club that helped the students as they developed their own custom webpages.  Lubna Lorena, who teaches Computer Science classes at Clements High School commented, “As I look at the energy and enthusiasm in the participants, I believe this is the start of a great tradition.”

“It was a really good and fun experience,” commented one of the students at the end of the class.  “This is a really good camp and I hope that it stays set up for a really long time.”

“We started with 30 students last time, we had about a 100 students this time, and we plan to have 250 students at the /C@deFest// at the next event,” said Pratish Kanani.   Students had been invited from a number of schools including, Clements High School, Fort Settlement Middle School, First Colony Middle School, Sartartia Middle School, from the International Business & Marketing Academy at George Bush High School.

IITAGH /C@deFest// is intended to be conducted many times a year. Conceptualized and envisioned by Anand Chauhan, an IIT-Madras 1998 graduate with over 15 years of coding experience in the industry/academia and supported by IITAGH, /C@deFest// is the Houston’s only premier introductory coding workshop of its kind that’s designed exclusively for the kids with no coding experience that aims to spark interest and satiate young mind student’s curiosity to consider Computer Science as a major and a career.

“I look forward to more successful events in the future and expanding this opportunity to more students in Fort Bend ISD as we grow our partnership with IITAGH,” said Anne Beckman.

For more information about the IITAGH /C@deFest// or upcoming sessions, please contact Anand Chauhan at anand.chauhan@iitcodefest.org or (281) 630-0781. Please visit the IITAGH /C@deFest// website at: http://www.iitcodefest.org and Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/iitcodefest

IITAGH is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.  We help our members connect, develop, and give back to the local community.  For more information, please visit www.iitagh.org