MIT Spark Program

  Two weekends ago, I went to MIT for their Spark program. Spark is a series of classes taught over the weekend for middle school students. The classes cover all sorts of topics, form cupcake-making to computer programming. Most of the classes were well-taught and interesting, but none of them inspired me in any way. Here are the classes I took, along with any comments I had about them.

• Saturday:
• The Physics, Chemistry, and Biology of Food
• This class was okay. The teacher wandered of topic for 60% of the class, but the parts where I got to learn what the class was supposed to be about were compelling.
• Math, Games, and Puzzles
• This class was pretty good. The teacher talked about the prisoner's dilemma and how the most rational decision can be the wrong one. I enjoyed this class.
• #winning
• This class was not as good as I expected it to be, but it was still fun. The teacher had us play and think about one game, which I forget the name of. I had hoped it would have been more about analyzation of many things rather than just this one game.
• Sunday:
• Gender and Health
• This class talked about how the different genders of people are more likely to get different ailments.
• Circuits in Cells? An Intro to Synthetic Biology
• This was probably my least favorite class. The teacher was not really prepared, she talked too quietly and too fast, and she assumed that the class knew things the at least some of us (me included) didn't.
• Lunch
• The food was good. I had a burrito, a water, and a cookie.
• Dynamic Programming
• This class was the most challenging and thought-provoking. The teacher talked about how to create algorithms that worked for all sorts of related situations.
• The Psychology of Shopping
• This class was amusing. I learned about phycology traps that companies use, like getting you to buy a $30 cell phone case, and how to not be fooled. We didn't get as far as the teacher wanted to, though, because she asked for question a lot.