A total of 48 students from Bluestem, Norris and Lewis & Clark Middle Schools completed the 11-week Fiserv Future Techies program. This is the second year Fiserv, a financial services company, has partnered with the Omaha Public Schools for the program.
The students in the program headed to Fiserv’s office for a few hours after school on Tuesdays to explore different areas of technology, said Joanne Sebby, Fiserv’s chief risk officer.
“They have the opportunity to be hands on with things like artificial intelligence, robotics, learn about cybersecurity concepts,” she said. “It’s really focused on the evolution of commerce to get them ready to be the future of commerce.”
The program culminated in student groups presenting their ideas for how financial technology could solve cybersecurity problems to Fiserv employees, who served as judges.
An ID verification scanner for ATMs was the winning idea. That idea came from a group of Bluestem students who envisioned “Shark Security,” a technology that would require those withdrawing money from an ATM to complete a hand and body scan to prove their identity as a way to protect against hackers.
The top two teams from Tuesday’s judging session will compete against other teams from Fiserv offices in Georgia, New Jersey and Wisconsin.
Susan Christopherson, OPS’s chief academic officer, said she appreciated that the program allowed students to visit a new environment, learn from technology professionals and create a project they could be proud of.
“I think it’s a very powerful hands-on experience for our young people,” she said.
Georgia Eastman, a seventh grader at Bluestem Middle School, said she enjoyed learning more about coding through virtual reality experiences, using artificial intelligence and “getting into the nitty-gritty of it.”
“I had a lot of fun with this program, not only learning and growing as an engineer, but also just hanging out and learning about how to succeed in the future, because fintech is becoming the face of the future,” she said.
Georgia’s group created a tool that would help keep data at schools and businesses secure. Georgia said she wants to either work in engineering or financial technology in the future and is on her school’s robotics team.
“I’m so excited for the future and how I can be a part of the engineering field,” she said.
Swift Moriarty, a seventh grader at Norris Middle School, was part of a group that envisioned an artificial intelligence tool that would create a savings plan for someone based on their income and the price of the item they wanted to buy. Swift said he enjoyed getting to try out a virtual reality headset to view a mixed-reality setting and launch rockets created from straws.
Swift said he thought the program was a great experience for someone with an interest in coding like him.
“You’ll learn a little bit, and you’ll have a lot of fun,” he said.
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