IT-Adventures: Turning high school students “ON” to information technology

The IT-Adventures program is dedicated to increasing interest in and awareness of information technology among high school students using inquiry-based learning focused on three content areas: cyber defense, game design programming and robotics. The target audience for this project is high school students, especially those students who previously have not exhibited an interest in studying IT, as well as high school teachers, not necessarily information technology teachers, who would like to enhance their skills and teaching abilities in the IT area. The program combines educational programming, competitive events and service learning projects to accomplish its goals. This paper provides details about the IT-Adventures program, as well as the capstone event for students - the IT-Olympics. Lessons learned and demographic data from the first year are presented. Work being conducted in the second year of the program (the 2008–2009 academic year) is briefly discussed.