By Zermi Jenkins, Contributor
The 3rd Tampa Bay Afrofuturism Festival returns Nov. 7 – 17, with Pinellas Diaspora Arts Project (PDAP) hosting two weekends of free music, visual art, educational panels, and community tech experiences. (For full festival schedule visit https://tbaff.com.)
On Saturday, Nov. 9, the festival offers its second Community Tech Day (CTD) at the Thomas ‘Jet’ Jackson Recreation, 1000 28th St S, St. Petersburg, FL 33712, beginning at 11 am with an educational panel discussing local urban technologies.
This year’s panel focuses on urban farming and food sustainability technologies with local experts including Dr. Joseph Dorsey, director of Food Sustainability and Security at Patel College of Global Sustainability at USF, Carla Bristol of the St. Pete Youth Farm, Lou Murray of The Manasota Food Action Council, and Erica Hardison of One Community Grocery Co-op; the event will be moderated by urban gardener Joyce Woodson.
The hands-on 2024 CTD events begin at 1 pm; along with 3D-printing, AI technology, and MetaQuest VR tech and mini-robots with Eckerd University, this year’s event features tech workshops and experiences with the Florida Education Fund (FEF).
Courtesy of FEF CodeMasters
Since 1984, FEF has developed and implemented innovative programs and employed non-traditional approaches to enhance outcomes across various educational levels.
Lyra Logan, Esq., FEF Executive VP and General Counsel is founder of FEF CodeMasters and Upskill programs; she is the author of the book Learn to Program with App Inventor, a computer programming text published by No Starch Press and distributed by Penguin Random House.
She will be joined by a team of FEF tech instructors at both Community Tech Days (a Clearwater Community Tech Day will be held at Artz 4 Life on Nov. 15).
Logan met PDAP board member Jake-ann Jones while researching artists in the Tampa Bay region to teach art to youth participating in FEF’s 2024 statewide Pre-College Summit. After learning about Community Tech Day, Logan acknowledged, “Given that we share PDAP’s mission to enrich underserved communities through creative programming, we quickly inquired about becoming involved.”
Courtesy of FEF CodeMasters
FEF’s programs were originally known as the McKnight Programs in Higher Education and administered by the Florida Association of Colleges and Universities, which served as the forerunner to Florida Education Fund (FEF). FEF began operating as a Florida non-profit in 1987 and has continually provided avenues to ensure educational advancement throughout the State.
“FEF’s flagship McKnight Doctoral Fellowship program is designed to address the underrepresentation of African American and Hispanic faculty at colleges and universities in the state of Florida by increasing the pool of citizens qualified with Ph.D. degrees,” Logan shared.
“Our Junior Faculty Fellowship Program promotes excellence in teaching and research by underrepresented minorities and women university faculty to improve their chances of earning tenure and promotion; our pipeline Centers of Excellence pre-college program prepares and motivates students to pursue and succeed in higher education through academic enrichment, statewide scholarship Brain Bowl competitions, and the National Achievers honor society,”
Logan said the FEF CodeMasters program exposes K-12 students to the fundamentals of computer science, teaches youth to code and links them with STEM mentors, develops standards-based coding curricula, and trains coding instructors, while the FEF Upskill program prepares youth and adult trainees for industry certification.
Since FEF’s inception, close to 2000 fellows have received McKnight Doctoral Fellowships, close to 25,000 have participated in pre-college Brain Bowl scholarship competitions and/or been inducted into the National Achievers Society, and close to 5,000 have learned to code and/or earned tech industry certification through FEF’s CodeMasters and Upskill programs.
Logan said that through CodeMasters, which began in 2008, students not only learn mathematical and computational thinking concepts, but also gain insight into the inner workings of technology and learn strategies for thinking critically, solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas.
In FEF’s after-school and summer programs, K-12 students learn the fundamentals of computer programming within the context of Web design; artificial intelligence, mobile app development; game design; and/or robotics and drone programming. High schoolers also earn tech industry certification.
People interested in learning more about CodeMasters program can visit www.fefonline.org/code.
The 2nd Community Tech Day (CTD) happens at the Thomas ‘Jet’ Jackson Recreation, 1000 28th St S, St. Petersburg, FL 33712 on Saturday, Nov 9, 2024. For more information visit www.tbaff.com.
