DISD STEM Expo

Tags: outreach, inspire, and connect
Personhours: 48
DISD STEM Expo By Ethan, Evan, Janavi, Jayesh, Lin, and Max

Task: Present to kids at the DISD STEM Expo

Every year, DISD hosts a STEM expo for local companies and groups to present to kids, in hope of inspiring them to go into a STEM career. So, for our booth, we drove our RV into the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center to present. We had three activities run by Iron Reign.

The first activity was helping kids 3D print keychains using Google Sketchup. We had nine laptops set up for them to use, all hooked up to four Flashforge Finders. When we first got to the Expo, we discovered that two of our printers had filament issues, so we were running on half capacity the whole day. Even then, we probably helped about 50 kids with their keychains.

In the front of the RV, we had laptops running MinecraftEdu, which features having a teacher have admin control, moderation, a dedicated server, and no PvP. MinecraftEdu is supposed to help kids with problem solving, bolster their creativity, and assist them with working with other people.

Outside of the RV, we were running a robotics workshop where kids could program Lego Mindstorms to do various activities, including robot sumo. Our coach and a few volunteers(from one of our sponsors, BigThought) were working that section.

Date | February 11, 2017