The wITches students from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering have taught magic in electrical engineering for nearly a thousand children

A volunteer group of students of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague teaches kids the basics of IT and electrical engineering. Workshops for children from 10 years to 15 years are free of charge since 2016. They currently offer five different topics - building and programming robots from LEGO MINDSTROMS, basics of programming in SCRATCH environment, basics of electrical circuits with BOFFIN, basics of programming and algorithms with OZOBOT robots and fundamentals of electrical engineering with programmable microcomputer MICRO: BIT. They arrange excursions to IT and technology companies for the participants, so that children get to know how everything looks like in practice. Students create and provide the program and tools themselves, as well as web application development, PR graphics, or management.

The vision of the wITches group, which currently consists of 18 members, is to show children what they can do and what they can do in the future. At school they learn the theoretical foundations, but they may not be able to imagine how it is used in practice and that it is not as complicated as it may seem. Children see that after a few hours of workshop they are able to create beautiful things. Since 2016, when wITches were founded at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, 941 children have participated in our workshops, 18 of which were from orphanages. Almost a third of the participants were girls.

In the upcoming academic year, students plan regular weekend workshops, a total of 12 will be held from October to December - almost every weekend. The exact dates will be announced on the website from the beginning of September. At the same time, the girls will also visit the children's home in Dlažkovice on 5 September, where children will be introduced to similar technologies. Activities for children's homes began with wITches at the beginning of 2019 and plan to continue them in the coming year.