4-H Club
His name Teens’ baking, sewing, and farm animal talents are vital to 4-H, which has supported and educated American youth for over a century. Recently, 4-H members at the Franklin County Fair in Columbus, Ohio, 4-H club, displayed their quilts and livestock. However, upon closer examination, there were indications of something novel and possibly unexpected.
Children were using iPad to control Sphero robots over the street outside a 4-H mobile classroom bus that was parked close to the fair’s midway. Inside, the children were using GarageBand to create music and Swift to code.
Calum Williams, 15, was going through Notes on his iPad in a neighboring barn before he showed one of the ducks they had bred.
Williams remarks, “I like how inclusive 4-H club is.” Besides cooking, sewing, and livestock raising, 4-H offers many additional technology-based activities, such as STEM projects. 4-H has changed significantly.
4-H is the largest youth development program in the US, with over 6 million members in every county and parish. The organization works closely with land-grant universities, which were founded in the late 1800s to increase higher education access by emphasizing agricultural and engineering skills.
Greater access to technology has been a cornerstone of 4-H’s recent expansion, partly because of Apple’s Community Education Initiative (CEI). Tens of thousands of students in 99 countries and regions, as well as all 50 states, have had access to coding, creativity, and employment prospects through Apple’s CEI program since its introduction in 2019.
The initiative has a special emphasis on underrepresented communities in technology. With over 40 years of history, a Apple has demonstrated a deep commitment to education and educational justice, which includes CEI.
In collaboration with The Ohio State University, Apple began bringing state-of-the-art technology to one of the nation’s most beloved community initiatives in Ohio. The Ohio State University provided hardware, funding, scholarships, educational tools, and access to Apple specialists for the project. Since then, the cooperation has expanded greatly, starting in Ohio. Through programming at historically black colleges and universities, thousands of instructors and over 90,000 youth in Ohio, New Jersey, Michigan, and Florida were touched by Apple-supported 4-H club programs between both in the spring of 2019 and 2024.
With expansions into Illinois, Kentucky, and Idaho, the curriculum will have been introduced to approximately 8,000 more pupils by the conclusion of this summer. In cooperation with North Carolina State University, programming in North Carolina is scheduled to start this autumn.
They are gaining abilities that will be useful to us in the future because technology is providing us with new tools to use for apple tasks.
Twelve-year-old Jobie Thinthapthai has four years of 4-H experience. She showed off the pig and rabbit she reared at this year’s Franklin County Fair in addition to making her first visit aboard the 4-H mobile classroom bus. The bus is equipped with iPad stations that allow children to experiment with robotics, coding, creating music, and art.
When she gets older, Thinthapthai plans to become a doctor. “It was really cool, and especially liked working with the robots and drawing on iPad,” she says. Technology and medicine are always developing, so knowing about it will benefit me in the future. The same is true with 4-H; technology is providing us with additional tools to utilize for their projects, which allows us to acquire skills that will be useful to us in the future.
One of the educators in charge of the 4-H bus is Mark Light. They began his professional life as a civil engineer and then joined Ohio 4-H to serve as its leader of STEM programs.
Only 10% of the 200 4-H project categories available in state are related to agriculture or animals, according to Light, a former high school 4-H club member. Technology plays a significant role in 4-H, and when children discover an iPad or Apple Pencil on the bus, it ignites a passion in them to acquire new abilities. Apple adore it when parents tell their children, “It’s time to get off the bus and go on fair rides,” and the children are so engrossed that they refuse to get off.
Through the 4-H Computer Science Pathways project, Apple started working with 4-H club and Rutgers University-Newark in New Jersey in 2021. Peer mentors from high school and college assist the program in engaging youth and developing their STEM skills.
“This program’s and Apple technology’s magic is that a young people’s hands-on experience makes them realize they can succeed in STEM fields,” says Rodrigo Sanchez Hernandez, a mechanical engineering graduate who now assists in running 4-H club programming in New Jersey. “They question why they can’t succeed if others can.’ when they see someone who looks like them and is roughly their age teach these advanced topics in a relatable way.”
The program has grown to include 4-H club around the state since 2021, including Trenton’s STEM Explorers camp this summer. Several dozen seventh- through ninth-graders rotated through workshops on iPads covering digital media, robotics, coding, and engineering throughout the month. At the end of the digital media week, each student designed a project to raise awareness of environmental issues through a learning lab based on Apple’s Everyone Can Create curriculum.
- At the STEM Explorers camp, Rodrigo Sanchez Hernandez is pictured with students.
- Participants in the STEM Explorers program utilize the iPad camera in a garden.
- At the STEM Explorers camp, students stand in front of a green screen while a fellow student uses an iPad to shoot their picture.
- At the STEM Explorers camp, a 4-H teacher uses an iPad to interact with young students.
Apple collaborates with Michigan State University and 4-H to provide youth in the Detroit region, as well as the state’s tribal nations and towns, with the necessary skills to pursue professions in technical and creative fields. Approximately eighty youth, many from tribal nations, participated in a 4-H camp this summer in the Hiawatha National Forest. There, they created Keynote presentations on robot building using an iPad and an Apple Pencil.
Calum Williams and his duck had just done judging back at the Franklin County Fair. He had been prepping for months, snapping pictures with his iPad’s camera and documenting his duck’s weight fluctuations in Notes since it hatched.
The judge revealed the outcomes after each contestant had seen their animal. The only person who appeared happier than Calum when he finished in second place was his mother, Danielle Moeller Williams.
Her kid joined the 4-H club because Moeller Williams’s mother was a member of the group when she was a child.
Moeller Williams adds, “There weren’t as many projects to do when Apple started as there are now.” “I believe there are just so many more options for the students to get engaged, especially with all the improvements in technology. Calum has learned how to use technology via 4-H, and They couldn’t be more proud of the young man They grown into or how he’s embraced it.”
