DURHAM — Katie Crittenden already knows she wants to study civil engineering after she graduates from Dover High School in June.

After she and 200 high school students spent Wednesday creating their own video games, playing with robots and lasers and got a glimpse into the future of police cars, Crittenden said she also has a greater appreciation of how high-technology works.

Crittenden was one of 19 Dover High School physics, computer science and engineering students that Physics teacher Patrick Woodworth brought to UNH. They were in the process of learning how fiber-optics create lasers in a program taught by Dave Miller, a computer science professor at Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth.

The students and their teachers traveled to the University of New Hampshire's Kingsbury Hall and Morse Hall for the second annual Explore High Technology Day hosted by the school's computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering departments.

Besides Dover High School, the other participating schools included Bow High School, Newmarket High School, Londonerry High School, Milford High School, Traip Academy in Kittery, Maine and the Seacoast School of Technology in Exeter.

"I think it's a great way to get an introduction to what you want to pursue after high school," said Josh Feltner, a junior at Newmarket High School.

He plans to attend UNH through the Air Force's Reserve Officer Training Corps program and study mechanical engineering. He hopes to one day either fly fighter planes or work on them.

Feltner said the UNH high-tech expo just makes him more excited to get into his field and learn more about how high-technology works.

Stephanie Brady, a freshman at Newmarket High School, was also creating a video game program in the gamemaker workshop with Feltner and her fellow classmates.

"I'm undecided, but I definitely have an interest in it," said Brady regarding the high-technology she learned about Wednesday. "It's just interesting looking at the future. The possibilities are endless."

Phil Hatcher, a UNH professor who chairs the Computer Science Department, organized the high-tech expo to give high school students a hands-on experience at the school's computer labs and research facilities so they might pursue high-tech careers.

"We want kids to know there's excitement in high-tech," Hatcher said. "We want them to know that high-tech is fun."

More importantly, Hatcher said there continues to be a great need for more high school graduates to major in high-technology related fields when they go onto college. When the economy that is currently mired in recession rebounds, Hatcher said there will be many good-paying and rewarding high-tech jobs in several fields.

"If kids don't major in computer science and computer engineering, these jobs will go overseas," Hatcher said. "It's a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Hatcher said the high-tech expo event at UNH also supports high schools currently offering computer science courses to students such as Dover High School.

Jim Fabiano, who teaches chemistry at Newmarket High School, said he brought 26 senior, junior and freshmen students to the expo. He said the benefits of having his students learn about high-technology in such a hands-on way are immeasurable.

"It's exceptional. This gives them a chance to see what their lives will be like after high school," Fabiano said. "It also kills the mystery and the fear of going to a university."

Hatcher said the expo utilized eight rooms in Kingsbury Hall and one room in Morse Hall where demonstrations of UNH's Project54 police car were held. Students attended 45-minute- to one-hour sessions on a rotating basis from 8:30 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. They also traveled by bus to UNH's Interoperability Lab located on the third floor of Goss International, a few miles away.

There Hatcher said students could see how many of the high-tech devices they use such as laptops and iPods interact with each other from a software and hardware perspective.

Ross Leinharth, manager of the Project54 outfitting program, said students had an opportunity to sit in a makeshift New Hampshire State Police cruiser and see how the voice-activated computer system works.

Leinharth said Project54 has been around since 1999 and improves driver safety for police officers by allowing them to activate all of the internal sirens, lights, laptops and other equipment with the sound of their voices. By freeing up their hands, Leinharth said the project allows officers "to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel."

He said the voice system is 97 percent accurate for the 1,000 New Hampshire State Police cruisers and local police departments that are currently using the technology in their cruisers. He said every community in Strafford County uses Project54 except Dover and only three towns in Rockingham County have yet to incorporate it.

Hatcher said he was very pleased with the attendance this year's high-tech expo experienced.

"We had 120 kids last year and this year we had 195," he said.