IRSA Launches K-12 Data Science Education Series with a Scratch Programming Camp
Students in grades 4-6 built their own games at the Scratch Programming Camp on October 24, 2026, the first event of the IRSA K-12 Data Science Education Series.
On Saturday, October 24, 2026, IRSA and the School of Statistics welcomed students in grades 4-6 to Keller Hall for a half-day Scratch Programming Camp. It was the first event of the IRSA K-12 Data Science Education Series, which brings data science and statistics to local K-12 students. The camp filled up, and no prior coding experience was needed.
Participants learned loops, movement and variables while building an apple-catching game and a Flappy Bird-style game, then kept coding on projects of their own. The camp connected these problem-solving and algorithmic-thinking skills to data science, machine learning and AI, and every participant left with a playable game to keep building at home.
Jeremiah Chi and Lachlan Gaspard of St. Paul Academy and Summit School led the camp, with high school mentors from a game development club and supervision by University of Minnesota faculty.
See the camp page for the full program.