School has started and the Innovation Lab is back open for business!! If you’ve got a great idea for your class, come sign up in the lab with one of the managers! You can also sign out tools and materials to take back to your STEAMy classroom!! We’ve added a few new items, including this … More Back in Business!!
The Innovation Lab opened in October 2015 with two Up Mini 3D printers. These printers worked great for us, but student projects have become more sophisticated, and general use is in higher demand. The need for a more robust, educationally focused 3D printer became a priority. We decided to go with the uPrint Plus SE. … More 3D Printer Upgrade!!!
The Innovation staff is available for teacher drop ins throughout the day to discuss curriculum development, project scheduling, and training on the tools. Jona Braden, the Assistant Athletic Director and Varsity Volleyball Head Coach, dropped by the lab to get help with a project for her team. Coach Braden knows that character development is just … More A Recipe for Success
The Sixth Grade English students extended their understanding of the novel The Outsiders by creating a model town based on the text. The students had to construct the town based on scale models and guided by the descriptions in the book. The students in each class began with complete autonomy, only guided by the framework … More The Outsiders Returns
Course: Junior Chamber Orchestra Teachers: Bo Na & Rebecca Colborg Frederick Students: 6th-8th grade Description of project: For our project, students wrote, designed, and recorded their own advertisement to recruit future orchestra students. They had to pick from one of the two orchestra pieces we were playing (Ludwig’s Tangl or Amadeus) for their sound track … More Orchestra and Advertising
Course: 7th grade pre-algebra Teacher: Gary Brown Each student chose a quote from one of four categories: Love, Challenge, Lead, Change. We created a spreadsheet to calculate the frequency of each letter in their quote – this took some effort. Students decided to include punctuation in the counts. Once we knew the number … More 3D Bar Graphs
Future Shark Tank competitors in Mrs. Sumner’s Economics for Entrepreneurs had their first exposure to building a prototype in the STEAM Lab. In this case, it was a special chair for a Scooby Doo character. Design Thinking and the particular needs of the character were explained the day before, and the students sketched their design … More Shark Tank Rebooted
Ms. Baker’s 6th grade art classes dove right back into the year, coming into the STEAM lab to continue working on their hoverboards. Students are in groups and using plywood, vinyl, staples, lots of tape, and leaf blowers to design their own hoverboards in all shapes and sizes. These hoverboards will be used as part … More Hoverboards
Have you ever stopped to think about what our planet will look like 100 years from now? How have our cities changed over the last 100 years? These are questions that a few students from Mrs. Bleich’s and Mr. Mackey’s Future Cities classes are trying to tackle. The Westminster Middle School is competing in this year’s … More Future Cities
Hola! Dia de los Muertes has come to the STEAM Lab! This tradition is celebrated all over the world, but especially in Mexico, where it is a public holiday celebrated 10/31-11/2. It dates back to the indigenous people of Mexico, however the holiday is celebrated throughout the world, including Westminster! Traditions connected with the holiday … More Dia de los Muertos!
