We had beautiful weather to kick off the first of our two weeks of 2016 UK See Blue STEM Camp! We are very excited to welcome 216 campers over the course of the next two weeks. Seventy-two of them started today. Registration went very well this morning and we really appreciate everyone’s patience in getting all the forms UK requires turned in. You all are awesome!
Just a note about the consent and assent forms that we ask for every year. Our camp is subsidized by an NSF grant that requires research and reporting to the agency. The purpose of the research is to develop a camp model that promotes STEM careers to adolescents and can be replicated. We also look at students attitudes towards STEM and the impact of our activities. We do not collect test scores or anything similar for your students nor do they have to be a Fayette County student to participate. Without this grant and consent and assent to participate the camp simply would not exist. We never report any names or any individual data…it’s always aggregated together!
We will post a blog post each night this week with some highlights from the day and some conversation starters. The conversation starters are meant to help you get over the “What did you learn today?” “Nothin’” or <shrugging the shoulders> we often see at the adolescent age. We’ll also post a link to the photos we are taking throughout the week. If at any time you want a photo removed that is of your child, please let us know and we’ll be happy to take it down.
Today the students split up and 1/2 saw Dr. Bruce Walcott and the other 1/2 saw Dr. Isabel Escobar. (If you like TED talks, you can view hers here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=
In robotics, students started by engineering their robots. They got to build their robot and get to know it. They always love this part, but we’re eager to continue moving them on to basic programming challenges. We have some exciting new challenges planned for them this week!
In their words… Each day we’ll post some excerpts from the students’ reflections of what they learned each day at the STEM Content session.
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We used a slinky as a demonstration of sound waves.
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I learned that the first woman that graduated from engineering helped invent AC.
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I learned that weight matters less than volume when it comes to making boats.
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I would like to be an engineer.
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The testing of new designs.
Dr. Escobar – What I learned today…-
That if you mix a type of powder and water and turn whatever you put it in upside down it will not spill.
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I liked that we did hands-on things instead of just talking about it.
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You got to play and touch it and experiment with it.
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I liked that we got to learn things chemical engineers get to experience.
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I want to learn more about the powder and water because it was really cool watching the powder form into a solid.
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I liked that we got to do the experiments that went with the lesson.
Conversation Starters… We know that your child is getting to the age where it might be like pulling teeth to get them to talk about their day beyond “It was fine.” “It was fun.” Each day we’ll post some suggested conversation starters centered on camp activities or STEM-related themes.
Dr. Walcott:
- Tell me about how you assembled your robot. Did you follow instructions? Did you just try to figure out what parts went together?
- Is there a particular field of engineering that you think might interest you?
- How many pennies did your boat hold? If you could build it again, what would you do differently?
Dr. Escobar:
- What happened when you mixed the powder and water and turned it upside down?
- What does a chemical engineer do?
- Is there a particular field of engineering that you think might interest you?
Photo of the Day… Each day we’ll post a camp highlight. Clicking on the picture will also link to all of the pictures taken at camp – It’s not working right now because I forgot to bring the camera home to download the pictures. Please note that we try to capture pictures of all the campers, but we cannot guarantee that we will get every single one. We try our very best to though! Also we are STEM teachers and not full time photographers, so our pictures are not perfect and we leave them unedited, so if you love to edit photos…feel free! (We did not do too well at taking pictures today with it being day 1, but we promise to do better tomorrow!)
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter to get live updates throughout the day! https://twitter.com/SeeBlueSTEMCamp