The Steam Maker Festival

The Steam Maker Festival

By Anisha Jarang, 4-5 School News Team

One word: Inspiring

- Mrs. Robles

The STEAM Maker Festival is an inspiring and creative event. It is great to see what kids are are doing in their classes in southern california.

- Mrs. Lamb

It is a myriad of exhibits. The STEAM Maker Fest demonstrates technology in science and related fields, like robotics.

- Mr. Manolo

At Design39Campus, students can do a variety of projects that involves math, engineering, art, science, and technology. But what if we mixed up that order. What if it was science, technology, engineering, art, and math? Well, what difference would it make? It’s still the same thing. But that order. That very order. Opens a new world for us.

You might ask what’s so special about that order. Well, if you take the first letter of each word in that order, you get a different word. And that word is S.T.E.A.M. Of course it’s not the vapor into which water is converted when heated, or the gas that races it’s way out a kettle. STEAM was originally just taught in school, but then, the whole world wanted to learn and celebrate STEAM, not just schools. So they created the STEAM Maker Festival.

The STEAM Maker Festival is designed to bridge the gap between school based STEAM programs and the MAKER Movement, a “DIY community that has come to be identified as the Maker Movement.”  The STEAM Maker Fest invites crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, and students to teach kids and adults alike about STEAM. You could find people of all ages using 3D printers, crafting utensils out of driftwood, or building fun machines, just for laughs.

Last year, our school participated at the STEAM Maker Fest. Our school always has so much science, technology, engineering, art, and math going on. The name describes it all! One of the nearly 25 students there, was Anisa Anaya, a 3rd grader at the time. She created a cupcake that had candles that lighted up. Owen, a 3rd grader too, at the time, created a house that had little christmas lights, that were actually LED lights. Gabriel, a second grader then, created a glowing snowman! Another student created a christmas tree with lighted-up ornaments. They all used LED lights, copper tape as the electricity conductor, batteries as the power source, and a lot of creativity!

This year’s Maker Fest was on December 5. It was at Del Mar Fairground. It was there last year too. This year, we had a new participant there. Safin Singh, a fourth grader, presented his work from his deep dive:ExploraVision. ExploraVision is a national event, where groups of 3 - 4 students, grade kindergarten through 12th grade, must prototype an invention that has already been invented, and tweak it so that it can be possible to be invented 20 years into the future. Safin and his group created the EveryBit, which can track your heart rate, your state of being, your temperature, take in-watch blood tests, and use your blood samples to look at genetic data. A fifth grader created little bristle bots, which are like DIY hexbugs. You make them with a bristle, a vibrating motor, and a button cell battery. At both events, was a 17-foot tall electronic giraffe, called Russell. People could also create cars in a Nerdy Derby. And there were a lot of booths where you could do all sorts of things, from petting parrots, to watching the stars and seeing where they would be at the time of day!

 

                         

The STEAM Maker Festival is a one of a kind event, and we are so lucky to have it so close to where we live. There is another STEAM Maker Festival in Florida, and there are tons of Maker Faires around the world (They are like STEAM Maker Fest, but a little smaller)!

So now you know that the STEAM Maker Fest is not a festival to celebrate the gas that water is turned into when heated (even though you can learn about that there too). It is a festival where you can learn and celebrate science, technology, engineering, art, and math.  So if you want to participate there, or just look at the wonders that were built by ordinary people, or simple engineers, the next one is on December 3rd, 2016. And if you’re afraid that you might miss that, you’ll be shocked to find out that it’s every year! So let the countdown begin! 365 days, 364 days, 363 days, 362 days, 361, days, 360 days, 359 days, 358 days, 357 days, 356 days …