Get your tech on

Wantagh High School will open its doors on a Saturday next month for the third annual Tech Day. Students in grades 5 and up are invited to participate in this educational opportunity which will introduce them to computer programming.

Tech Day will be held on Jan. 9 beginning at 9 a.m. Planned classes include game design, mobile development, and web development. Board of Education Trustee Peter Mountanos, the coordinator of the event, said that a robotics class is being considered as well.

“We’re going to be teaching different concepts,” Mountanos said. “You see all the time that computer science is everywhere.”

In an interesting twist, Mountanos said that students will not select the classes they want to take. Instead, anyone who signs up will list their skills and their interests, and a computer will create the class assignments. He explained that the goal is to pair students with similar abilities.

The instructors, all Wantagh High School graduates, will teach the classes based on what their students want to learn. “We try to gear our curriculum toward what kids are interested in,” said Mountanos, a 2012 Wantagh High School graduate and data science major at New York University.

He added that in the model of big Internet companies like Google and Facebook, the instructors will lead the students in projects in which they can work together. “We want them to be excited about technology,” Mountanos said. “Programming is very collaborative.”

All of the instructors have graduated from Wantagh within the last four years and many are studying computer science or a related subject in college. He said the volunteer staff will bring their expertise and enthusiasm to Tech Day. Each class will have at least two instructors.