Conducting K-12 outreach to evoke early interest in IT, science, and advanced technology

The Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute has engaged for several years in K-12 Education, Outreach and Training (EOT) events related to technology in general and computing in particular. In each event we strive to positively influence children's perception of science and technology. We view K-12 EOT as a channel for technical professionals to engage young people in the pursuit of scientific and technical understanding. Our goal is for students to see these subjects as interesting, exciting and worth further pursuit. By providing opportunities for pre-college students to engage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities first hand, we hope to influence their choices of careers and field-of-study later in life. In this paper we give an account of our experiences with providing EOT: we describe several of our workshops and events; we provide details regarding techniques that we found to be successful in working with both students and instructors; we discuss program costs and logistics; and we describe our plans for the future.