Author: Dr JP

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April Newsletter 2024

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Spring! Check out the news for this month

  • Last week of Summer Camp Sale
  • We have Officially Moved!
    • New Location
    • Renovations
  • Bigger and Better Things Ahead…
    • Robotics Competitions this year
    • Open lab hours
    • Once a month STEM program
    • Robotics Enrichment program

Last Week of Summer Camp Sale

It’s been a crazy busy 2024 🤪 If you haven’t found the time to sign up or have some questions, reach out to us ASAP so we can get you all signed up before the discount ends.

Summer Camp Enrollment

We have Officially Moved!

All Classes at the New SW HQ

All classes going forward will be held at our new HQ. The remainder of the Spring Session 2024, all Summer Camps 2024, and all our offerings going forward will be held at 1 Charles Blvd, Guilderland, NY 12084 🥳

Renovations

We met with our renovation team, and they will be able to work around us while we are there! We won’t see anyone, but please pardon our mess while the space is being updated. Below, you can see the final plan for the new HQ. New floors, new paint, windows, and walls removed are all part of the reno. It should be all done in time for summer 🔥Some awesome additions will be our dedicated VeX Robotics Arena for e-sport competitions, Virtual Reality, dedicated art/creative space, dedicated workshop/maker space, and Movement-based gaming to have them move their bodies and have fun during breaks!

Bigger and Better Things Ahead

The new SW HQ is going to allow us to offer more amazing opportunities for our local students. We will be providing more details over the coming months, but we wanted to highlight a few ideas 🤓

  • VeX Robotics Competition Program – The new space will allow us to support a VeX Robotics Competition Program. This is a prestigious, competitive e-sport event sponsored by top science & tech companies in the US. It provides many of the benefits of competitive sports while also developing the critical career skills needed in an AI future, such as academic resilience, analytical thinking, and logical reasoning. Learn more about the SW VeX Competition Program and our first orientation on May 3rd here.
  • Open Lab Hours & Bussing 🚌 – Thus far, our STEM Enrichment Program (SEP) has been a teacher-driven weekly, 1.15-guided lab. Each year, we develop a new technical curriculum based on a STEAM (Sci-Tech Eng Art Math) theme to expose students to new ideas, challenge them to develop grit, and learn a growth mindset through hands-on project-based learning. We are working towards student-driven open lab hours starting in the Fall for kids enrolled in our enrichment programs. Students can be dropped off at the lab for 1-2 hours a day, have access to all our lab resources, and continue working on their projects, robotics, and other STEM activities. We are in talks with our local school districts to have students bussed 🚌 directly to SW HQ😃 If you are interested, contact us right away!
  • Monthly STEM Enrichment Program (SEP)  – We want to make our programs more accessible to our families who really want to join but have distance and time constraints. Our new HQ will allow us to offer our amazing SEP monthly for 3 hours, most likely on Saturdays, starting this Fall 🙌Each semester, students will get a total of 12 hours to work on our incredible project-based curriculum, which goes way beyond any standards in the US education system. Our Weekly SEP will be the preferred option for our local families as it will offer more hours, flexible scheduling, and the option for Drop-In Open Lab Hours.   
  • Robotics Enrichment Program (REP) – This Fall, we will launch our first-ever REP. The REP will focus on using Lego Robotics to teach students the fundamentals of robotics. Each semester, we will focus on a new robot build and have some fun & friendly competitions 🔥This will be a great way to introduce students to the world of robotics. This is an excellent complement to our STEAM Enrichment Program (SEP): The SEP is breath-focused, connecting interdisciplinary cross-domain knowledge to develop creative problem-solving skills critical for careers in an AI job landscape, while REP will be more depth-focused for those engineers who love robotics and want to build!
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STEAMwhiz VeX IQ Robotics Competition Orientation

We are holding an in-person orientation for STEAMwhiz VeX IQ Robotic Teams on Friday evening, May 3rd 🥳 It’s a fantastic opportunity for students going into 4-8 grade to dive into the world of robotics! It’s a big commitment, so pls take a look at the slides. If interested, use the link below to fill out the form. Feel free to ask any questions in the comments section.

For our younger students who are interested in robotics, we are planning a Robotics Enrichment Program (REP) for this Fall that will prepare them for Vex Robotics Competitions once they enter 4th grade. More info coming soon!!

Orientation Sign-up Form

https://forms.office.com/r/AunmH5NiPe?origin=lprLink

(Will send meeting details via email)

SLIDES

Parents learn more about VeX at there website here

This was last year’s competition, which is currently in the World Finals!

We volunteered at the VeX State Finals this year in Queensbury NY. This was an awesome all-girls local team that did really well 🔥🚀

https://fb.watch/rB3UYm8rlS

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Using New Tools to Teach Advanced Concepts – Minecraft Create!!

What is Minecraft & How Can it Teach 21st Century Skills?

Don’t let the blocky design fool you into thinking this game is basic!!  There are ‘deep layers‘ to Minecraft (pun intended for my Block Heads 🤣). For parents trying to figure out what Minecraft is and if it’s safe I understand! Answer: Yes, it is safe. I learned to play the game in order to figure that out myself. Now it’s an immersive family activity where we all can have fun together. It does have some exciting & maybe even scary characters for little ones like zombies and endermen. Word of caution, it does introduce the concept of ‘killing’ whether it’s to defend yourself from attack or via farming. There are weapons such as swords, bow & arrows, etc. but no guns. 

Minecraft is an open world in which you gather materials to eat, build, and create. The gameplay/mechanics can be as deep as you want them to be. In Creative Mode you have all the materials available to you so that you can just focus on creating without having to worry about being attacked by a mob or how to gather/’mine’ materials. In Survival Mode you must hunt and gather just like you would in the real world. I suggest you go chop down a tree to start ‘crafting’ items like a door and create a shelter to protect yourself from attacking mobs at night time 😬 There are some great resources online a simple google search will pull up to learn more. I also suggest checking out Youtube to see some of the amazing things done in Minecraft. 

Ok you may be asking, “Dr J how does this relate to learning?!?” To help answer this question, let’s dive into the Top 3 Questions on How STEAMwhiz Uses Minecraft as an Educational Tool!

  • How Can Minecraft be used to Teach Problem Solving?
  • How Does Minecraft Allow Students to Develop their Creativity?
  • What Modern Skills can our Students Learn from Minecraft?

How Minecraft can be used for Education

Investigating Automation
Minecraft creative expression
Eden PhysicalComputing

1. Problem Solving

The default game in Minecraft is called Survival Mode. It’s an open world where the main objective is to survive. You need to build shelter, figure out food to sustain yourself, and if you are crafty, you can figure out how to mine for diamonds and hunt the Ender Dragon. The are so many layers of problem-solving for example:  how do you build a house, create doors, can you farm animals, which animals are okay to eat, is it better to build near water or in a forest, where are the best places to mine, how can you craft new items? Players can test theories, ideas, try new things, and experience failure in a safe way and then repeat.

But what about “cheat” videos, where kids go on Youtube and learn how to do things on their own by copying what others post? Often kids won’t find exactly what they want so they research partial solutions and create entirely new solutions, awesome. This is not very different than finding solutions in the real world, whether they dive into a physics books, scientific research papers, or even a Youtube video. Kids will quickly learn about good and bad sources once they try to copy builds off Youtube.

 

 

2. Exercising the Creative Muscle

Minecraft is a true sand-box game. What does that mean? A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides the player a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or in other words, with a goal that the player sets for themself.

The first shelter I ever created was a hole in the side of a mountain to hide from mobs XD But that was a limitation of my imagination. Players have recreated beautiful works of art, medieval castles, the statue of liberty, and even entire cities…block-by-block. The possibilities are endless! Creative Mode is an excellent way to unleash this creativity, especially for younger children. All the resources are available to them, they don’t have to worry about being attacked, and they can fly in the air as they build. All they have to do is imagine what they want to build and develop some GRIT as they start to build block-by-block. They can even custom design their avatar to look like a ninja or supergirl.


Learning electrical circuits and logical gates in Minecraft. a) Shows the circuit diagram of a 4-input AND gate b) Is the circuit built in Minecraft using Redstone. The torch will only turn on if all 4 wood plates are being pressed down =D

An even deeper layer – let’s take it to the next level! Minecraft has a system of making machines. Redstone is a resource that you can mine deep in the earth and is the equivalent of copper wires and electricity. You can build complex machines to automate tasks that take forever to do manually. Students can learn about electricity flow, repeaters, logical gates,  and building cool machines all using Redstone. The outlets for self-expression are amazing!!   

3. Modern Skills Development

The benefits keep adding up! Minecraft helped my kids learn to read, apply math fundamentals, and develop critical computer skills early. The game also encourages kids to develop logical reasoning. For example, mastering Redstone requires rigorous logical thinking. It teaches the essentials of computer programming, including debugging circuits to find solutions. At STEAMwhiz we also use Minecraft to develop challenges that require teamwork which provides students with a safe environment in order to develop communication skills, conflict resolution, plan development, and leadership. All critical skills are needed in the real world. 

Furthermore, we take it to next level yet again by teaching students how to write code to HACK into the Minecraft world using the world’s most powerful coding languages like Python and Java. We really blow their minds when we bridge the physical world by connecting LEDs, buzzers, and buttons that they can code to bridge the Minecraft virtual world to the real physical world by making sounds, teleporting at the push of a button, or creating a diamond detector that lights up an LED when near a diamond resource! This area of study is known as Physical Computing and I have used it throughout my physics career; whether to look at individual atoms on a multi-million dollar Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) at Brookhaven National Lab or to probe the magnetic moment of elements at the billion-dollar Advance Light Source synchrotron at Lawrence Berkley National Lab. I learned these skills during college — What will these young innovators come up with when they are starting as early as 6 years old?!

Get Started

Our SciTech Summer Camp is a great place to begin. It is Minecraft centric and goes deep into STEM! 

Minecraft is available across most major platforms. We encourage you try it out for yourself. To download it and get started click here . This is a great starting tutorial for Survival Mode. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out and we will try to get you pointed in the right direction 😉

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June 2022 STEAMwhiz News & Events

The Countdown to STEAMwhiz’s Summer Camp is On…

Opening day is July 5th!

What will your kids be doing this summer? Create, Solve, and Innovate with Science, Design, Coding, & Robotics @ STEAMwhiz’s Minecraft Sci-Tech Summer Camp – Physical to Virtual

> Limited Space Available

> Full and Half Day Options

Register Now

Friday, June 17 @ 6:30 PM - dUSK | tAWSENTHA pARK

STEAMwhiz End-of-Year Celebration & Reunion

Where: Tawasentha Park Playground

188 NY-146, Altamont, NY 12009

 

All current, former Students & Families, as well as upcoming Summer Campers…

 

Let’s gather together to celebrate the accomplishments of our SW Kids and meet new friends!

Bring a picnic dinner, blanket, and/or chairs, and enjoy a sweet treat provided by the STEAM-Team.

Meet, Eat, and be Merry with the STEAMwhiz Crew in Guilderland’s Tawasentha Park.

Hope to see you there, weather permitting!*

 

Email us at [email protected] to RSVP

Self-Automated Watering System 

STEAMwhiz’s Robo Ecology  – Spring Semester 2022 is almost one for the books! The final week of labs is June 13-17th. This past semester SW students took their design, coding, and robotic skills to the next level by creating a self-automated watering system by utilizing CAD & vector art software, Python coding, and advanced physical computing elements & devices. Developing analytical thinkers – the ability to tackle a complex problem by breaking it into specific, workable components – is a core value here at STEAMwhiz. Our Input vs Output: Sensor Squish Lab lab was one of the many hands-on, inquiry labs preparing students for such a large, complex problem. Check out Kiera (below) explaining how robots and automated systems take in information from the physical world and do something in the virtual one!

steamwhiz @ Home | avalilable now!

Flower Box Electronics Add-On

Keep Tinkering & Doing @ home by ordering the Automated Flower Box Electronics.

The STEAMwhiz Flower Box Electronics Kit Add-On will allow your SW student to continue to investigate and experiment with their own Python coded Self-Automated Watering System and grow their plants using code, robotics, and automation. Wanna know the best part? This package includes a re-programmable Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller, which can then be reprogrammed to be used for other projects in the future!

Check It Out Here!

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Early Fall Registration

By popular demand, our Fall 2022 Semester is OPEN for early registration. 

STEAMwhiz’s 2022-2023 Academic Year will be using Nature as a Design Partner as we explore and investigate Math, Art,  and Coding with Physical Computing.

It’s never too EARLY to prepare your student for THEIR future!

Register Today

A New Experience

STEAMwhiz, Physical Computing, & Raspberry Pi's, Oh My!!

What is physical computing, why is it important, and how is STEAMwhiz empowering the next generation of thinkers & doers?

We are working towards this goal by creating both in-person labs and digital courses (coming Fall/Winter 2022). This means that we are not developing one-off projects but a deep curriculum for students rooted in (S)cience (T)ech (E)ngineering (A)rt (M)ath to provide the fundamental and technical acumen to become the innovative problem solvers of tomorrow.

Read More and discover how the STEAMwhiz is supporting this great endeavor!

Read More

REGISTER TODAY

Stay in Sync with STEAMwhiz

Follow all STEAMwhiz’s latest news, educational articles, and more here.

Check out our monthly MakerLab and Events here.

Create An Account And Never Miss A Beat With Our In-Person STEM Programs Covering Coding, 3d Printing, Laser Cutting, Robotics, Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math (STEAM) And So Much More.

Register Today
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STEAMwhiz, Physical Computing, & Raspberry Pi’s, Oh My!!

STEAMwhiz

We are gearing up to reach more early education students across the good ol’ US of A in the latter half of 2022 (stay tuned). Our mission is to empower more students with the knowledge to become innovative problem solvers that will prepare them for their future, not our past. Our Co-founder and Program Director Allie and I have worked at all levels of the nation’s education system, from public school teachers to curriculum developers at National Laboratories to doing fundamental research at the highest levels of science in America to working at Fortune 100 companies! We are creating both in-person labs and digital courses (coming Fall/Winter 2022) to pass this knowledge on to the up and coming generations. This means that we are not developing one-off projects but a deep curriculum for students rooted in (S)cience (T)ech (E)ngineering (A)rt (M)ath to provide the fundamental and technical acumen to become the innovative problem solvers of tomorrow. You might ask why STEAM? Well, we believe that these fields have a bright future that will not only provide excellent careers for young students but allow them to be creative in amazing ways and exploits their natural curiosity about the world around them. By tapping into their potential, as early as 6 years old, we believe they will be able to find solutions to the novel and difficult problems they will face in the future!

Physical Computing

An amazing development in the last decade or so is the accessibility of Physical Computing for young students! What is physical computing and why is it important? Well we know computing is related to computers right 😋 let’s give it a bit more of a formal definition

COMPUTING is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery.

Wikipeda

In other words, it’s the use of a computer to accomplish some goal or task. This typically resides inside of the computer in the virtual world. Some examples are creating a scientific model to predict the weather or writing a blog post like this one 😄

Now we add the word PHYSICAL to the term COMPUTING and we move out of the virtual-only world and interact with the physical ‘real’ world as well.

PHYSICAL COMPUTING involves interactive systems that can sense and respond to the world around them.

Wikipedia

Sometimes it’s easier to see than to read, so below are some fun examples from MIT Maker Resources for K-12 Educators.

This is basically at the heart of all our technology; bridging the human physical world with the virtual technological one! Now imagine the amazing creativity and ingenuity that the next generation of students can explore with these tools at their disposal, if we transform the when, what, and how we teach them!

Raspberry Pi’s

The GP (i.e. General Purpose) are the PINs used for physical Computing

Ok, so how does the Raspberry Pi fit into all of this? The Raspberry Pi is an amazingly powerful, little single-board computer that is relatively inexpensive for students to explore Physical Computing. What makes it different than any other computer? While it is a ‘normal’ computer that can be used to browse the internet, write a document, and code a program, it also has an amazing suite of programs geared for kids to explore computing! Moreover, it has special PINs called General Purpose Input Output PINs (aka GPIO PINs) that allow the Raspberry Pi to connect to sensors, lights, motors, actuators, buzzers, pumps, and so much more. It bridges the physical world into the virtual one like the videos above!

STEAMwhiz Pi

One challenge of the Raspberry Pi is that there is a barrier to entry that requires a certain level of technical understanding to really unlock its power. So what we have done at STEAMwhiz is create a wonderful plug and play solution for parents and students, which we call the STEAMwhiz Pi 😅

The STEAMwhiz Pi (pictured above) is basically an exact clone of what we use in our in-person labs, with a touch screen and the exact software configuration we use to teach our students throughout the academic year! This allows for our students to continue working & innovating at home well after they leave the lab. Bonus they can use it for their school work too, as it’s a full-blown desktop computer!

Isaac putting in the work at home and doing physical computing after lab!

Where is this all going? Well, while there are great tutorials online and fun project boxes, most are not really targeting early education & holistic curriculum development. So it is possible for some very driven students to learn, but it’s mostly geared toward an older audience through standalone disconnected projects. In Q3 & Q4 of 2022, we will begin the rollout of our STEAMwhiz app to deliver STEAM courses specifically targeting early education which will be a full-blown curriculum to provide our decades of experience to students across the country in a fun animated storybook fashion. The STEAMwhiz Pi is the first step so parents can just plug and play a system for their children to begin exploring the world of physical computing! You can learn more about the STEAMwhiz Pi here.

Getting Started in Physical Computing

In the meantime, while we roll out our STEAMwhiz app, we encourage our students and parents to check out the links below to get started in the world of physical computing and get those inquisitive minds working! Feel free to reach out if you have questions or comments and we will be happy to engage.

Python & Physical Computing

A nice tutorial to get started with Physical Computing and Python!
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/physical-computing/0

This tutorial introduces some basic electronic components and how to use a great coding language called Python to control LEDS, buzzers, and more! Python is ubiquitous in research and industry throughout the world and is an excellent first coding language to start out with.

Scratch & Physical Computing

A nice tutorial to get started with Scratch and Physical Computing
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/physical-computing-with-scratch

The tutorial above introduces physical computing using a drag and drop visual block coding language known as Scratch. If you are unfamiliar you can read more about it in our other post here. We recommend this for students who can read and write but are just starting to dip their toes into coding.

Once you have gone through the tutorials above you can check out more here fun projects from the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

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February 2022 Headlines

STEAMWhiz Academy

Beating the Winter Blues

The weather may be colder and the days shorter, but we’re STEAMin’ it up with Winter’s Semester: Water, Fire, Coding & Robotics. The hits coming this month with in-person EVENTs like ‘make & take’ MakerLabs and Minecraft Challenge Nights @STEAMwhiz Lab HQ!

STEAMwhiz Year-Round Programs

  • Never to late to Join

    If we have a seat, get started today!

  • Winter Semester

    Now – Mar 18 | Robotic Arm Water Fire Extinguisher

  • Spring Semester

    Mar 21 – Jun 17 | Automated Watering Flower Box

Learn More

Click below to learn why STEAMwhiz uses Scratch

Free & Fun
Thinking + Doing @ Home!

Sign-up for a free Scratch account @https://scratch.mit.edu/ and unleash your child’s creativity

Learn More

In-Person Events

In the NY Capital District? Get hands-on with Science + Design + Fabrication tools such as laser-cutter, 3D printers, sublimation and heat press tech, CAD software, image manipulator & vector design software, classic hammer + nails, and more! Check out our monthly MakerLab Events below and make something cool using science, technology, and engineering.

Feb Break SciTech Mini-Camp

Light it Up! The Science of Light

February 21st – 25th

  • Advance Learning

    Empower the NextGen ‘thinkers & doers’

  • Deep Fundementals

    Scaffolded labs result in deeper understanding

  • Innovate

    Apply fundamentals to be creative problem-solver.

Learn More
macbook

Snowflake & Laser Lab

February- Sat. 5th @10-11:30 AM

Explore the science behind snowflakes, design a unique snowflake using geometric patterns in CAD, and learn about the laser cutter tech used to fabricate your design. ‘Make & Take’ home your very own custom, laser cut snowflake design!!

Learn More
macbook

3D Printed Heart Box

February – Wed. the 9th @ 5:30-7 PM, Sat. the 12th @ 10-11:30 AM

Share the love with a 3D Printed, CAD-designed heart box. Experiment with cloning shapes, negative space design, and custom text to make this a ‘one-of-a-kind’ expression of LOVE!

Learn More
macbook

Minecraft Challenge Nights

February – Fri. 19th @ 7-8:30 PM, Wed. 23rd @ 5:30-7 PM

TEAMWORK! Kids come to the lab w/friends and the STEAM-Team creates large challenges designed for group interactions, team strategizing, and fun!

Learn More
macbook

Awesome Dry-Erase Lab

March – Sat. 5th @ 10-11:30 AM, Wed. 23rd @ 5:30-7 PM

Choose & laser cut your dry-erase character. Learn to use vector-graphic software to personalize them. Use sublimation technology to transfer your design to the white-board.

Learn More

Gearing up to build our Robot Arm

Winter Semester Fun!

Our students are learning so much and having a blast doing it. Are you looking for more for your child’s edu? We are transforming how they learn & developing a growth-mindset early! Registration Open.

Learn More about Labs

Want to stay in-sync with STEAMwhiz? Create an account and never miss a beat =)

Sign Up Today
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We love our MOMs!

Come to the lab and have your kids create, learn, and give mom a gift that keeps giving! Together with the STEAM-TEAM, they will use the laser engraver and illustrator software to create Mom a customized flower box for Mother’s day.

They will pick the seeds of their choice, from flowers to herbs, add soil and plant them. Just show up and we will do the rest!

Here is a great piece on the Makerlab event by our local WTEN news =)

https://www.news10.com/top-stories/steamwhiz-helps-kids-build-a-fun-and-scientific-gift-for-mothers-day/