Fibonacci Program Gives Teens with Learning Disabilities an Advantage

2019-08-15

What’s the Fibonacci Program?

An eight-week program held by Codecraft Works for high school students from the Brevard Achievement Center (BAC), in partnership with Vocational Rehabilitation, has yielded an opportunity for teenagers with learning disabilities a chance to be successful in the field of IT upon graduation.

During this time, the students learned the basics of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, along with becoming Google Analytics certified.

The idea for the program came about from Chris Price, employment services coordinator for BAC, who had approached the achievement center’s CEO Amar Patel, according to Mrs. Goff.

“They were able to put this program together fairly quickly from conception, thought, to actually enacting it,” Mrs. Goff explained. “We designed the program so that we could use the state money from Vocational Rehabilitation to pay for portions of it, and then we’re using some of our grant funds to pay the rest.”

How Learning was Administered

As computer science and software engineering education subject matter experts, Codecraft Works has a unique ability to quickly produce technical programs that provide a solid foundation for technical work and fertile, well prepared grounds for continued technical learning in technical classes, higher education, or on the job learning programs.

Through the on-the-job training segment, five companies partnered with students and gave them access to the back-end of their websites. Students were able to pull Google Analytics reports for statistics to see once visitors reached a business’s homepage, what page did they visit next, and what buttons were visitors clicking on.

The students also investigated and implemented more advanced analytic skills such as data collection, processing and configuration, and more complex analysis for marketing.

They were then matched with local businesses to provide analysis of web data, all of which students earned a paid work experience for what they learned in class.

The Incredible Results

“All seven students at the end of this eight-week course passed their Google Certification exam, four of them with perfect scores,” said Keri Goff, community relations manager for BAC. “They started with Google Basic training, then Google Advanced training, and then they did the Google Power User certification exam. College students don’t even ace that test.”

“What was hoped for but not expected happened as well, which was the social aspect,” Mrs. Goff said. “We’re talking about high school students who are generally very shy, very closed… they don’t have good social interactions.

“At the end of the day, they were very proud of their work, they were talking to complete strangers about what they had done,” she continued. “They were out of their shells. It was a great experience overall to see not just the academic growth, but the social growth as well.”

All students learned how to create a Google Analytics account, implement tracking code, analyze basic reports, and how to set up goals and campaign tracking - all for the goal of becoming certified.

Brevard Achievement Center gave these students with learning disabilities a big advantage in this competitive field with this certification.

Final Thoughts on the Program

Anyone can take the steps to help their kids get ahead in the growing, unavoidable world of software - no matter their learning style.

Applications will soon open this month for adults with learning disabilities to apply for the Fibonacci program at Codecraft Words. Meanwhile, those students who passed the inaugural eight-week course are now eligible to apply for a more advanced course with a focus on website building tools.

Interested parents or students should contact BAC directly for more information about the Fibonacci programs at (321) 632-8610 or visit www.bacbrevard.com ⎋.