Northern and Southern High School students of FRC Team 1629, GaCo, were “Featured Speakers” at Common Ground 2024, which was held recently. In addition to their Featured Speaker session, they presented at two other concurrent sessions about how they make a systemic impact on all students in Garrett County Public Schools and their experience with FIRST robotics. They were also part of the Maryland Center for Computer Science (MCCE) “Computer Science Playground,” where they provided computer science activities for educators to experience.
One of the highlights for GaCo was meeting and sharing ideas with conference keynote speaker Samantha Dahlby, Director of K-12 Education, NewBoCo, a non-profit that promotes computer science education. GaCo senior Sophia Rankin said, “This conference has always been such a great experience for GaCo. We love sharing what we do with educators and getting new ideas to bring back to Garrett County. Ms. Dahlby inspired us, and we were excited to learn that we’ve been working on the same things from different angles. Hopefully, we’ll be able to collaborate more with her in the future.”
Common Ground is Maryland’s top K-16 Professional Development Conference and happens annually during the “off-season” at the Ocean City Convention Center. All student expenses were funded by GaCo’s non-profit, GaCo, Inc.
