After our weekly club meeting on Tuesday afternoon, six club members volunteered to lead a maker table in the school lunch room on Thursday. Club assistant Mariam helped to per-train the volunteers on a simple make--creating light-up badges with copper foil tape and LEDs. The volunteers then shared their expertise with non-club member peers in the school lunch room. The goal of this activity was two-fold: to give club members a chance to practice/develop leadership skills and demonstrate their growing expertise with making skills, and to help recruit further members for the club. Thanks to our volunteers this week who will receive leadership credit in the club's gamification platform for helping out with the maker table.
This week in the iNEST Maker Club, we welcomed Christine Sachs, Magnet Coordinator for Reedy Creek Magnet Middle School for the Digital Sciences, and Reedy Creek principal Trent Evans. These administrators are interested in setting up a makerspace at their school, and visited to see our makerspace in action. Mariam worked with several club members today on digital name badges. These volunteer iNEST members will be leading a maker table in the school lunch room next Thursday, as a recruitment tactic to interest more of their peers in the club and making, and as a leadership tactic to give club members a chance to demonstrate their growing STEM expertise. See below for info on this week's field trip... Another recruitment tactic for the club took place earlier today at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. The entire 6th grade class in WYWLA was invited to participate in a grant-sponsored, STEM-oriented field trip to the museum's Nature Science Research Center, and had opportunities to explore hands-on interactive exhibits and visit labs staffed with real scientists and researchers. The intent of this field trip as part of the grant was again to interest students in STEM and the work of the iNEST club, ideally attracting more students to participate in iNEST. Thanks to Mrs. Vick who organized the trip, and other WYWLA teachers who took the time to chaperone with NC State partners Stephanie Grady and Kevin Oliver. Some pics of the day out are shown below:
Today in the iNEST Maker Club, the nine club members who attended last weekend's Invent It Build It Expo in Philadelphia kicked off the club meeting by describing their experiences and their favorite parts of the Society of Women Engineer's expo. Students described attending an expo of STEM vendors in Philly, as well as participating in hands-on STEM activities with female engineering mentors from across the U.S. Our club members can get credit in the club's 3D GameLab learning environment for participating in field trips, and several of the girls who went to the Expo submitted documentation of their experience for credit. Please see the excerpt describing one participant's experience below. At the club meeting today, mentors finished putting together the LittleBits cart ordered from the grant and stocked the 50 or so bins with individual bits that students can pull out to work on a number of electrical-oriented projects. Students continued their work on a variety of projects--paper craft, copper circuit greeting cards, programming of Hummingbird robotics with Snap, soft circuits, and more. In the past week, Dr. Oliver has submitted two proposals to the NC-TIES conference on behalf of the club, and if accepted, students will have the opportunity to co-present at the conference next March in Raleigh. In addition, Mariam is preparing a copper circuit badge activity that students will co-present to their peers in the school lunch room later in November. These activities are part of the grant's efforts to encourage students to lead making activities and develop their leadership skills in addition to their new STEM skills. Our club is beginning to create a stir--we have been contacted by the county and administrators at another magnet middle school who will be visiting our club next week to learn about our makerspace and making activities. Excited to share all that we are learning. "The Field Trip I attended was the Invent it, Build it expo. This was on October 28 to October 30. This was a great trip! We went sightseeing in Philadelphia and were able to learn about American History. The highlight of the entire trip was of course the Expo. We heard from guest speakers, both whom were in engineering. One of the guest speakers was actually a race car driver. She grew up building cars and racing them. It was very interesting to hear her story of how she was always encouraged to "Drive like a man." And that up until recently, she became proud to drive like a girl (which she was really good at). The Expo was very enlightening. We engaged in projects at the different booths. One booth, the Steiner Electric Company Booth, had us try to balance a paper clip on a battery and make it spin form the energy coming from the battery. It was pretty cool. Another booth dealt with robotics. The robots we tested were mainly dealing with cleaning up the environment. The robot we tested could sweep up a block and then transfer it to a conveyer belt and transfer it to a place where it can be deposited. After touring the expo we engaged in a project to build a car powered by a fan on a motor. the objective was to build a car that could be driven straight by a fan rotating on a motor. I was teamed up with another WYWLA student. We were successful at getting the car to move but most cars rotated in circles due to the materials we used. The Expo/conference was sponsered by SWE (Society of Women Engineers). I learned that though women are underrepresented in engineering, we do a great job when in this career. I also learned that mistakes are made when building things and that the only thing you can do is improve. I also learned from one speaker is that you should find mentors, supporters, and other people around you to support you and teach you. You should know how to advocate for yourself and be prepared to do your best especially because engineering is male dominated and women can experience gender discrimination. Thank you for allowing me to attend this Trip and I hope to go the next time and attend other field trips. I really think engineering is the right path for me." |
Purpose:Dr. Oliver's weekly update of activities in the iNEST Maker Club. Archives
April 2019
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