Young Dragons
Virtual Offering for Summer 2021
West Philly Middle Schoolers! Join Drexel’s ExCITe Center for up to 4 weeks of virtual fun in Minecraft! The Virtual Young Dragons 2021 summer camp will be all online, through an interactive virtual experience where students collaborate, build, and learn together in Minecraft, Pocket Edition (phone and tablet version) while exploring new gaming adventures.
Virtual Young Dragons is a 4 week online summer camp offered at no cost for middle school students in the West Philadelphia Promise Zone. The program runs on Tuesday and Thursday mornings (9:00 AM to 12:00 PM) starting on June 22nd through July 15th. Young Dragons is a partnership with Drexel's ExCITe Center and West Philadelphia Promise Neighborhood, providing innovative STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) activities developed specifically for 10-14 year-old learners.
Participants should be rising 6th-8th graders living or attending school in the West Philadelphia Promise Zone, an area served by the following middle schools: Alain Locke Elementary, Morton McMichael School, Martha Washington Elementary, Science Leadership Academy Middle School, and Belmont Charter School. For reference, the West Philadelphia Promise Zone is indicated on this map.
The deadline for application materials is June 11th. Contact YoungDragons@drexel.edu with any questions.
Participating students must have access to a device (phone or tablet) with internet access to participate in the camp. For assistance obtaining internet access click here.
Archive of virtual activities from 2020
Check out last year's activities in the sidebar. These are not structured and can be done on your own time!
The Young Dragons virtual Climate Change curriculum will equip students with the scientific evidence for understanding and explaining the impacts of climate change, and learn what can be done in our homes, neighborhoods and cities, to mitigate and adapt to the changing climate. Through an eight week online curriculum with learning and activities that can be done from home, students will explore a new topic each week: climate and weather, your carbon footprint, food, water, biodiversity, oceans, cities, urban heat island, and renewable energy. View Activities.
Offers students the opportunity to design and develop their own virtual environments. In each online module, participants will have the chance to learn how to code using block coding and then move onto text-based coding. During WPVR Mashup, students will explore technology related careers through real-world activities including design, development, and coding. View Activities.
Wanna make beats and songs like the ones you hear on the radio and listen to all the time? Songs you can easily hear your favorite artist performing to and all you have is a smart phone? Your phone is literally all you need! Join us to learn ways to make beats and get the most out of your phone. You will learn how to create, manipulate sounds, drums, export songs to share and more. It’s not about what you got, it’s about how you use it. If you’re up for the challenge. We are here to get you to the next level! View Activities.
About the Program
The Young Dragons program is a unique six week summer camp offered by the ExCITe Center at Drexel University. Since launching the Young Dragons partnership in 2016, we have been providing innovative science, technology, engineering, arts/athletics, and mathematics (STEAM) activities to middle school students living in the West Philadelphia Promise Zone. Throughout the program, we incorporate the scientific method, the engineering process, and arts & design to facilitate the development of agency and strengthening of creativity and self-expression. This summer we will be providing innovative STEAM focused online learning activities in Minecraft!
Program Partners
