GCISD Secondary STEM

We are so excited about the great things our STEM Academies will be doing this year! This newsletter will come out each month to highlight the activities, top-notch instruction and amazing students that make up each of our STEM Academies.

This year we are welcoming our newest edition to the family, Colleyville Heritage High School. This is a sister program to our GHS STEM Academy and will offer the same great benefits as GHS.

Join us for the following events to see what students are doing in GCISD STEM.

• Pumpkin Chunkin' - October 21st, Location TBD, more information coming soon
• HeroCon - November 1st - School Day Event at GMS, more info below

Later this fall (more info in our next newsletter):

• Fall STEMposium for GHS and CHHS
• STEM Family Night at GMS

Ben Waits (pictured above on the right), is our Secondary STEM Instructional Technology Specialist, and he was recently accepted to attend Picademy. This is a free 2-day workshop that is provided by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to 40 attendees based on a competitive application. At the end of the conference, Ben was named a Raspberry Pi Certified Educator.

The Raspberry Pi is a complete computer that is about the size of a deck of cards and only costs $35. Ben spent the first day learning through various modules on physical computing, incorporating electronics, sensors, and cameras, and then extending all of it to incorporate the internet. The second day they said, "You learned a bunch of stuff yesterday, now go make something." This was exactly how we run things in STEM and an amazing experience. Ben was able to get together with a group of educators from all over the country and make a positive message system that would be triggered when someone walked into a room, say our Makerspace, and would take a picture of the person. Then it would add a positive message, like "Makers gotta make" or "Great things come from those who dare to create" over their picture and display it to them. If we had more time, we also could have programmed it to take the picture and tweet it out to the world. There were other groups that made dancing robots, interactive student response systems (think Jeopardy on steroids), etc... They were all amazing projects from some very creative people.

All in all, the information that Ben learned at this prestigious conference was all directly applicable to our school and students. Our next steps it to introduce these concepts to the students either in class or in an afterschool club.

Do you order from Amazon, Big Box or other delivery services on a frequent basis?

This year with our new House Keys system, we will be using large amounts of cardboard. To make sure we have enough for our students, we are asking for parents to bring cardboard boxes to GMS during the month of September. Please send your cardboard to the front office at GMS and we will collect them for use in our MakerSpace.

Requirements

• Small enough for one person to carry.
• For space purposes, all boxes should be flat when arriving at GMS.
• Brown or white corrugated cardboard only. Please, no shiny or "slick" cardboard.

Girls Soar! Aviation Day is right around the corner. The Girls Soar! Aviation Day introduces girls in 8th to 12th grade to exciting real-world applications of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) in the airline industry. Our objective is to expose girls to positive and inspiring female role models in STEM and airline-related careers. Our goal is to ignite a passion for aviation and to fuel dreams of careers in this ever-growing field.

We are expecting to host 200 girls in grades 8th-12th on Sept. 21 from 12:30 p.m.–5 p.m. and we are looking for our education partners to help spread the word to get girls registered and to participate in our Innovation Challenge. As part of this year's Girls Soar! Aviation Day, the CR Smith Museum is launching its first annual Innovation Challenge! We are looking for 7 teams of creative, forward-thinking, and ingenious young women, in 8th to 12th grade, who want to participate in a friendly competition. We are blasting the information on our social media pages, website, and newsletter that will go out later this week.

To register for both events and to find out more, please direct them to our website http://www.crsmithmuseum.org/programs-and-events/education-and-programs/girls-soar/.

HeroCon is coming to GMS on November 1st. This is a one of a kind event that highlights STEM careers and experiences for all students at GMS. The event is conference style and students get to choose which session they will attend based on their interests and campus requirements.

We are looking for parents that would like to present in at least 2 - 20-minute, highly interactive, sessions to students and businesses that are interested in providing an experience for students or willing to donate prizes.

If you are interested in volunteering for HeroCon, contact matt.canafax@gcisd.net

If you would like to donate a prize for students please contact our GMS PTA president,

mailto:president@gmspta.net

Each month in STEM our teachers will focus on a different skill. These skills are some of the most important skills that students can learn for future success. The resources below are just a few things that you can do at home to help your student learn more about these valuable skills. As always, a simple conversation with your student about how you use the skill in your career can go a long way.

As the year goes I will embed the links to previous newsletters here so you can see something that you might have missed.