News Archives

07/2013 - McClatchy cohort building game

The C.K. McClatchy cohort is in their second summer session, and now building their math-based instructional game and preparing it for testing. The 37 students are led by summer instructor and Software Engineer Sean Blakesley, and assisted by instructors Edison Chang, Ruben Griffen, and Sac State Computer Science student Jonathon Yu. With delivery only 2 weeks away, the students are hard at work!

07/2012 - Grant HS completes math-based instructional game

The Grant cohort is proud to announce the completion of their math-based instructional game, featuring a cute penguin named "Junior". The game teaches addition, subtraction, comparisons, telling-time, measurements, and other skills using 1st and 2nd grade math standards. The game is written in Java. What a finish!

07/2012 - McClatchy HS cohort learning Java

Our C.K. McClatchy cohort has already finished their Scratch games, which were demonstrated at the parent workshop. For their final two weeks of summer, they are starting to learn Java, using the Greenfoot development environment. CSUS instructor Devin Cook should have them well prepared for the school year and into next summer!

06/2012 - Grant HS cohort learning Java

We are proud to welcome instructor John Johnson to ITEST, who is teaching our Grant High School cohort in their second summer course. The Grant students have moved on from Racket, to the Java programming language - a more professional development tool. Mr. Johnson is running the class very much like a real-world team environment, so students are learning team dynamics from an experienced industry professional.

06/2012 - Welcome McClatchy Students

This is the second summer for ITEST, and it is our pleasure to welcome our second cohort of high school students. They are from C.K. McClatchy High School in the Sacramento City Unified School District. We also welcome McClatchy's wonderful teacher Edison Chang, who will be joining CSUS instructor Devin Cook. See our first pictures of the cohort by clicking on the "activities" link... more coming soon!

07/2011 - Bonding Event

The first cohort summer class officially ended at the picnic/bonding event held at the Sac State library quad. Students from Grant Union High School demonstrated their completed games on a large flatscreen monitor (to the delight and amazement of their parents!), and participated in fun activities with mentors and family members.

06/2011 - College Seminar

Fifteen ITEST students from cohort 1 chose to participate in several weeks of special lunchtime seminars conducted by successful former MESA students. Emphasis was placed on what students can do to increase their college opportunities, and secrets of how to succeed in college (and beyond). The students who elected to participate in the weekly seminar were pleasantly surprised to receive a special gift at the bonding event!

05/06/2011 5:00 pm - First Cohort Selected

The first cohort comes from Grant High School in the Twin Rivers school district. This select group of students was chosen based on their algebra course grades. They represent a diverse group that mirrors the Sacramento community. There are 18 males and 21 females, the majority of whom are sixteen years of age. All of the students will be eleventh graders in the Fall at Grant High School.

06/03/2011 5:00 pm - Mentoring Panel Invitations Sent

Dr. Biddle has sent out the formal invitations to the candidates for the Industry Professionals Mentoring Panel. The event is scheduled to take place on July 15, 2011. This will be a great opportunity for students to hear from professionals currently in the programming field. The students can find out how, for example, they feel a career in information technology can be both fun and rewarding, in spite of the challenges.