Team 111's Girls in STEM Workshop

[Lauren Anfenson]

A few students on WildStang decided to organize a fun event for girls to get them interested in STEM fields at a young age. The workshop - affectionately called "Miss Maker Fair" - took place on November 1st at one of our team's high schools, drawing over 30 girls ages 9-13 from several local elementary and middle schools. We had participants rotate through different activities throughout the day, making sure they got exposure to the electrical, mechanical, and software sides of engineering.

More information and pictures can be found on our blog: http://wildstang.org/blog/?p=410

[AlecMataloni]

Lauren,

This is really cool! Congrats on the success you had! I wish we had done something like this while I was still on the team...

[ebrnc]

This is great! My team actually helped out with something similar to this called Green Girls. In Green Girls, we mainly focused on the areas of solar power, wind power and hydro power, covering other important topics like gear ratios and project planning in a more brief manner. The kids really enjoyed the learning opportunity and we hope to continue helping out with the program. Even though it is called Green Girls, we made sure to keep it open to both genders as to maintain gender equality.

I find it impressive that your team was able to cover electrical, mechanical and programming basics (all essential components of FRC and FTC) in a short period of time. How did you decide what tasks to use to explain these concepts to a younger age group? Any tips? I would love to bring back any advice that you can provide to Green Girls and to the process of developing 4607's summer camp for kids. Thanks

[vboratyn6053]

Originally Posted by ebrnc

I find it impressive that your team was able to cover electrical, mechanical and programming basics (all essential components of FRC and FTC) in a short period of time. How did you decide what tasks to use to explain these concepts to a younger age group? Any tips? I would love to bring back any advice that you can provide to Green Girls and to the process of developing 4607's summer camp for kids. Thanks

Thank you for the positive feedback! We tried to choose activities that would be possible to complete within an hour (so we wouldn't lose interest), easy to follow, and create a satisfactory product participants could keep. For us this meant, among other activities, catapults made out of balsa wood and breadboard projects . We also had a 2:1 ratio of participants:volunteers so that no one would get left behind. Lauren and I are currently in the process of making a guide for this type of event, so more information is on its way. Feel free to PM either myself or Lauren if you have any questions. We're looking forward to hearing more about Green Girls in the future.

[ElvisMom]

Along those lines we are hosting a "Dads and Daughters STEM Night" at the local library the Wednesday before the Father/Daughter Dance at our middle school. It's not until January so would love to see your guide as we start thinking about activities.

Thanks!

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Please check out this article about our young women and STEM in our area. About halfway down is coverage of our Miss Maker Fair...
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/2...ews/141119965/
Several young women on our team decided that they needed to do something to recruit more women to the team. In their experience they wished they had better exposure to stem opportunities so Miss Maker Fair was an outgrowth of that idea. I am very proud of these ladies and the other team members that they recruited to help. The available space filled up in just days and they are already planning another event for next year that is even bigger.
Check out our monthly newsletter also assembled by one of our other talented young ladies.