BPS students build their own cellphone in Liberty Partnerships Program summer camp

Louange Mizero stood outside Baldy Hall on Wednesday with a smile on her face as she placed a call on a simple smartphone that she made essentially on her own.

“This is crazy,” she said in astonishment.

Mizero, a ninth-grade student, is one of several middle and high school students participating in I Can!, a summer camp held by UB’s Liberty Partnerships Program, which serves students in the Buffalo Public School District with a goal to reduce dropout rates.

The I Can! program is a three-day excursion for students where they immerse themselves in the college experience. Students live on UB’s North Campus and participate in mock college courses and skill workshops.

Mizero’s smartphone is the result of one of those workshops. Each day in the program, students were guided by UB professors and graduate students to create a working phone that can send and receive calls.

“The kids go through three stages [with this project],” said Oliver Kennedy, assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “The first one was an electronics class where the kids learned about circuits and soldering. They essentially assembled all of the electronics components of the phone. The second class was a material design class where they learned about computer-aided design software and learned how to design the case of the phone.”

All that remained for the students on Wednesday was to program the phone. Each phone was already rigged up with a touchscreen, a battery, and the Raspberry Pi, a small circuit board of electronics with the power of a computer from a decade ago.

“These are all off-the-shelf supplies that you can buy on an electronic supply site,” said Kennedy. “They get to assemble everything on their own and they get to take the phone home with them thanks to the National Science Foundation’s support for this.”

The students spent the next two hours learning the basic concepts of programming through Scratch, a visual programming software targeted toward teaching younger students. With guidance from Kennedy, every student finished the day with a simple cellphone that could call anyone.

Once finished, each student went outside to test their phones by calling each other. Expressions of disbelief and excitement followed each call, capping off what many students described as an enriching learning experience.

“This program has been so much fun because I haven’t done anything like this,” said Mizero. “In just a few days I’ve learned so much about how phones work. At first I was doing everything wrong [when putting it together], but now it’s a working phone. This is definitely the kind of thing I want to do more of someday.”

Ziyon Agunbiade, another student in the program, also said that he enjoyed the experience, especially because it’s something he’s never done before.

“This has been really interesting,” he said. “It’s a new learning experience and it kind of inspires me to create more stuff like this. It’s encouraging.”

This program wasn’t just fun for the students, however, as the graduate students involved also enjoyed teaching important new skills.

“It was certainly a different change of pace than having my nose in books all day,” said Carl Nuessle, a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. “You’re actually working with people and how to get them interested in computers while breaking it down into terms appreciable to the general public. [I enjoyed] when the students’ eyes would light up. Their gears are turning and it’s one thing for us to do a ‘download, do this, and this,’ but today they took the next step.”

Kennedy said he’s also happy that the kids enjoyed it, but more importantly that they’re leaving with skills that they can use for the rest of their lives.

“They’re demystifying what’s going on in a cellphone,” he said. “They’re learning that even these things aren’t magic and that there’s stuff that goes in them. It’s not this mystic art for people in nerdy T-shirts that build these things. They themselves can put these together. It’s not magic, just a lot of parts working together.”

“We’ve given these students skills in electronics, material design and programming,” he added. “Hopefully this excites them about one of those as a potential career choice.”