By Nancy Williams | Project Leader
Summer STEM Academy sessions at the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands are off to a big start. Our youth and staff are ambitious this summer. We are running a total of 12 camps at eight different sites with a culminating event, Gaining STEAM, planned for August 2nd to showcase all the cool stuff youth participants made during the academy sessions.
In the past two weeks we have launched three sessions in the past two weeks: GameTech, ClubApp and GrubClub. With your gracious support, we have purchased enough tablets and controllers so that each student in a session gets one to complete activities. The tablets really come in handy when completing written or video reflections. In GameTech each participant spent nearly 15 hours creating games with Scratch and Kodu and in GrubClub another group of youth spent the same amount of time learning about local seasonal foods found in the garden and at farmers markets, learning to take vivid photos and videos and edit them using tablets and computers, learn to make simple kid-friendly healthy snacks and pulled it all together working in project teams to create their own websites. In ClubApp teens learned to use AppInventor to create working apps and test on the tablets. Teens also use Codecademy to get introduced to another side of programming and coding. Your support helped us leverage a relationship with a local company, Valvora. Valvora's AppStation provides us a platform to deploy our student made apps directly to any target audience. The kids get so excited when they download their app and see it work on a mobile device.
We are just getting started. In the next eight weeks, we will run GrubClub at four more Clubs. In the MakerTech session, youth participants will use maker software to design items and print them with the new 3D printer that is on its way to the Club. You want to witness giddiness then show the video about the 3D printer to teens with imagination! In Poetic Beats, teens are mentored and guided by Nebraska Writers Collective poets to craft lyrics and Club staff to put those lyrics to music. The resulting songs will be used as a soundtrack for the Gaining STEAM event on August 2nd. Teens in FabRehab will design each showcase space; tranforming the Boys & Girls Club into a tech lounge filled with art and applications by youth.
We have ended each weekly academy with a healthy snack reception on Friday where participants get to make the snack and share their work with other youth and staff in the Club. GameTech ended with controllers in hand and kale plus mixed fruit and blueberry smoothies. GrubClub ended with website viewing, a fruit salad with local berries and local zucchini and broccoli stir-fry.
Thank you so much for your support. Without you this great start to a summer STEM intensive would not be possible! It is making such a difference. We have eight weeks until we finish but our post surveys are confirming interest in STEM opportunities. The results of the project based learning are proof that they are learning how to use the tools: playable games and working websites. But more importantly participants are learning life skills. In one of Chaz' video reflections during GameTech, he stated that he learned 'when things get hard, don't give up.' High fives!
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