Junior Agents Abby Johnson, left, and Meghan Anderson, worked at building a working computer tower from an empty case and components, during a technology camp for girls hosted by the Westonka School District last week. (Contributed photos by Carol Shukle)

Westonka District hosts summer computer ‘academy’

By Carol Shukle,
Contributing Writer

Being called a geek is not something teens typically consider “cool.” But the girls who spent three days out of their summer vacation in computer classrooms at Mound Westonka High School last week would probably disagree.

The 80 young ladies in grades 6 through 12 were attending one of the first Geek Squad Summer Academies, sponsored by Minnesota-based electronics retailer Best Buy, where academy participants learned to build computers from scratch, design web pages, set up computer networks and other media activities. The MWHS program is one of 14 such efforts set to unfold around the county this summer in cities like Chicago, Atlanta, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston.

It was the Westonka School District’s existing relationship with the Best Buy that contributed to the district being able to bring the academy to Mound, said Sue Simonson, teacher at MWHS. She said some of the district administrators and teachers attended a meeting with Best Buy execs last winter where they heard about the summer program. “We so wanted to land it,” she said.

The summer academy was originally the brainchild of Geek Squad agent Moira Hardek. She was working in her hometown of Chicago when she got the idea to do a summer academy at her own former high school, a large Catholic girl’s school with 2,000 students.

Although she was transferred to Minneapolis during the process, with the blessing of the company she continued to organize the summer academy and was able to spend time in Chicago conducting two four-day sessions attended by 300 girls.

“When I came back and told them about it they asked me if I’d like to make it a full-time project.” The rest of the year was spent planning and gearing up for the summer academies, securing partners and selecting the locations. Since the program is developing, she said, it was important to find host facilities that were interested in being part of the development process.

“Most of us would have killed to have had this experience as kids,” said Hardek, adding that many of the employees who are volunteering are parents themselves.

One of the primary aims of the program is to get more women interested in technology and to break down some of the myths and stereotypes associated with the field, she said. “There are myths that women don’t belong [working in technology] or that it’s very difficult. We want to break those [notions] down. The whole idea of a geek - suddenly it is cool to be one.”

Simonson, who teaches computer science classes at the high school, said boys continue to be far ahead of girls in technology. In her classes this past year out of 40 students, only two were girls.

The academy program has two required classes - computer building and web page design. For the Westonka academy, the local planners also selected computer networking and multi-media. In between each class the girls had special activities like digital scavenger hunts, playing computer games like Dance Dance Revolution and Nintendo Wii and making jewelry with computer wire. The program was set up for 100 participants but Simonson said she was very happy with 80, which allowed the girls to be divided into four groups of 20 by ages. She was not surprised that the largest single groups were for next fall’s sixth and seventh graders.

The high school’s marketing class took on promoting the academy in the spring and made visits to Grandview Middle School and the non-public Our Lady of the Lake School as well as to the eighth and ninth grade girls at the high school. The girls at GMS were so excited they were cheering, she said.

Tuesday the academy was visited by Geek Squad founder and CEO Robert Stephens, who told participants that his company needs many more girl geeks.

For young kids to make a connection with science and technology takes hands-on experiences, Stephens said later. “This is the beginning of a long term goal to teach kids that technology can be fun and that technology skills are relevant. The earlier they make that connection the better. Maybe they will be a little more interested in science in school.”

He started the Geek Squad as his own business in 1994 while still a student at the University of Minnesota. When he had grown the enterprise as large as he could on his own, he said, the opportunity to partner with Best Buy, another Minnesota-based company, presented itself. The Geek Squad was launched nationally as part of Best Buy in 2004. It now has 20,000 agents world-wide.

Clad in the standard Geek Squad uniform of pressed white shirt, narrow black tie and black pants and shoes with white socks, Stephens said he thinks of technology as a tool to do anything else - even fashion design or gardening. “Everyone has a different kind of intelligence. We want to awaken them to what their true gift it. We’re doing for them what my parents did for me - let me take the world apart.”