All Categories

STEAM Centre Awarded OTF grant

2/16/2021

$31,700 OTF grant enriches lives and gives community members a voice by funding artistic tools and the creation of an audio/video production studio at STEAM Education Centre

We are delighted to be the recipient of an Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) $31,700 Capital Grant. This grant will allow the Centre to build an audio/video/production technology based studio that will enrich the lives of the local community by providing a space where further art and technology education can be explored. Students from the Ignite Youth Centre, other youth groups and members of the community will be able to access the space, once in person visits are safe to do so, and use it to create videos and podcasts as well as to explore other digital technologies. This provides an opportunity for sharing voices that might not otherwise be heard and teaches fundamental arts and technology skills.

“Students love to make and create to demonstrate what they're learning. The creative process is also about giving students tools to construct a variety of emerging technologies to learn through experience. This Capital grant from OTF will give students an opportunity to create their own expressions, build meaning, work through problems, and acquire new knowledge and skills in context,” says Jessica Gransaull, Executive Director STEAM Centre.

The OTF grant will allow for the acquisition of:

Software Licences
3-in-1 Laser/Router/CNC machine
A creality UV curing and cleaning tool for creating amazingly precise 3D prints
Graphics tablet
Shaper origin and its workstation ( a robotically controlled cutter that can move across surfaces)
Laptops
Maker tools like hand tools including drills
3D Printer filament
Paint brushes and art supplies/consumable materials
Conductive sewing thread
Clay and clay dye
Leather
Safety Equipment

The Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) is an agency of the Government of Ontario, and one of Canada’s leading granting foundations. OTF awarded $108 million to 629 projects last year to build healthy and vibrant communities in Ontario.

0 Comments

The Science of a Season

1/19/2021

0 Comments

#iSTEAM

Vertical Divider

Fall is a magical time of the year and features nature at a time of change. The sight of colourful leaves falling to the ground, the sound of each crackling footstep, the chill of an autumn breeze and the smells and taste of the fall harvest tantalize every sense. For iSTEAM, it was the perfect time to introduce the students at Antler River Elementary School to the stories that surround this time of year and to teach them the science and cultural stories of why some of the changes occur.

Every year we get to witness the beautiful process of green leafy trees changing into a beautiful display of reds, oranges and yellow leaves that then fall to the ground, leaving bare branches, awaiting spring renewal. Have you ever wondered why does this process occur?

From a science perspective, in the fall, the tree gathers back some of its energy for storing in its branches and stops or limits producing the green colour in the leaves. The yellow and orange colours are always there hidden beneath but it is the substance called chlorophyll that produces the green colour during the rest of the year so that the tree can store energy from the sun. But what about those vibrant red leaves we see? Well the truth is that no one fully knows why leaves turn red in colour. The red is made in the leaf while the green is disappearing and it is thought that it may act like sunscreen and help the leaf while it stores the energy in the branch, or it may be that when the red leaf falls to the ground it feeds the soil and protects the tree for spring. The students also learned how to tie the changing leaves process to their own culture by discussing the story of the Great Bear which explains traditionally why the leaves change colour.

On our Canadian flag we celebrate the central icon of the leaf which is from a maple tree. Students were asked to find a leaf and practice etching by placing it under a piece of paper and rubbing a crayon overtop. Like magic, this reveals all the veins in the leaf which are so important in the transfer of water to the entire tree. To finish off their artwork leaf design, the students traced the edges with a black magic marker and then could cut it out to add to their school tree. While collecting leaves to create this piece, students were also encouraged to gather enough colourful leaves to tear and use like a paint palette. They then glued the leaves to an outline of the Great Bear, further reinforcing the story they had discussed, to create a new work of art and were encouraged to design a background. The students were provided with maple tree facts that were both scientific and culturally based and were asked to bring them back to school to share and gather all the facts together. Some of these facts focused on learning the types of trees that are found locally such as the sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and the importance and how to of cultivating maple sap for uses in food and medicine based on traditional teachings.

Vertical Divider

The fall season also brings with it the smells and tastes of harvest time. Since Halloween was fast approaching, and with some help from Ferguson Farms, students were provided with pumpkins to carve and learned about how in Indigenous cultures the focus is to use every part of an object because it is considered a living thing. The pumpkin seeds in this case can be saved and used for planting or roasting so students were encouraged to do so. They could then take their pumpkin jack-o-lantern’s home to display. This was the perfect way to celebrate and learn about the “Colour-fall” season of Autumn.

0 Comments

STEAM & The Community

12/31/2020

0 Comments

STEAM Community Studio

“It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

In a year of great challenges worldwide, there grew an opportunity to look at the needs of the St Thomas- Elgin County community and develop a plan to prototype possible solutions. Thanks to a $225,000 donation by the estate of Donna Vera Evans Bushell, the STEAM Community Studio was created and officially launched on November 10th, 2020 to help create impactful community change.

Inspired by a concept pioneered in Vancouver and developed in other large cities across Canada, STEAM Community Studio is a model of experiential learning and civic engagement that will foster collaboration between students and key community stakeholders including academics, teachers, political, community and business leaders. It's focus on issues in rural communities make it the first of its kind to showcase rural concerns using this model. This three- year pilot project will feature six selected suggestions annually in which STEAM team members and participants will examine challenges facing the community and propose potential solutions while developing recommendations to address the problems. Up to $2000 of funding per project is available for prototyping these possible solutions.

At the November virtual zoom launch, participants included those from; the Thames Valley District School Board, the City of St Thomas, City of Hamilton, Western University, University of Waterloo, St Thomas Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Business Development Board, Wellkin Youth Engagement advisory committee and local students. These participants gathered to share ideas on how best to reach out to the community to seek ideas for the area’s most pressing issues and to partner those issues with local students as an experiential learning opportunity.

Following this launch, for the next three weeks STEAM Centre collected the suggestions from the public and has now released its first four selections. These issues are now in process to be paired with student groups and academic classes. The Centre received sixteen submissions and has tabled some for future participation.

The first four selected are as follows:

1) Reducing waste: Finding reuse for items in a cluttered world
Using design thinking students from the Western University Environmental Health Promotion class will be asked to prototype a physical process to enable reuse at the City of St. Thomas Community Recycling Centre. This facility currently receives a number of waste and recycling streams but doesn’t have a reuse model. Students will look for answers to questions like whether a small area could be designed with basic rules to allow users to drop off and pick up materials. Measurables such as environmental impact on landfill and emissions as well as the overarching theme of giving old materials new life in order to reduce manufacturing waste from new product creation will be part of the prototyping process.
Proposal by:

2) Creating Sensory Spaces
Students will research and prototype a series of modular "sensory wall" panels. The inclusion of sensory play in a space may offer an opportunity to create more accessible spaces for all people who seek support for improving their mental health. The challenge is to design the sensory panels in such a way as to be able to adapt to different room sizes and environments and to create them using safe materials and systems to use them even during the pandemic.
Proposal by:

3) Virtual Marketplace for Small Businesses
This global pandemic has had a massive effect on our small and medium sized enterprises and if you are accustomed to brick and mortar sales this has become a race to capture an online presence in order to succeed. Students will be provided with an experiential learning opportunity to prototype solutions to assist local business owners to utilize technology to gain more of this market share.
Proposal by:

4) Audio/Video Production Studio for Youth Skill Building
Creating an opportunity for youth skill building through establishing an audio-video production studio. Youth would be involved in the planning of the studio and ultimately the studio would be a tool for continual learning. Students at both the Ignite Youth Centre and through in class programming would look to the STEAM Centre for guidance and assistance in creating the studio.
Proposal by:

The STEAM Centre welcomes further submissions and academic partnering applications.

Apply Here

0 Comments

STEAM SNAPSHOTS

11/30/2020

0 Comments

#iSTEAM

STEAM Education Centre and Antler River elementary school from the Chippewa of the Thames First Nation have joined forces to inspire digital literacy among elementary communities through the newly created iSTEAM program. Thanks to generous donations from Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) and the Ontario Trillium Foundation the multi-week year long program has the Centre provide weekly sessions where the students get to build on S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art design ,Math) based skills and combine its relevance with indigenous storytelling and teachings and curriculum ties.

In the first session students were taught about the concept of the how and the why of the sky and that hidden in plain sight is all the wonder of the world. The idea of exploring that we are in this amazing, invisible fluid all day that sustains us and we ignore it but it is what we breathe and what allows all flying things to have a chance to fly, float and soar in this graceful interaction with gravity and energy. The first challenge when discussing flight dynamics was to create an object out of paper that would stay afloat in a built air tube. This could be a paper airplane modified in various ways or a helicopter using a pattern provided to the students. They could also test to see how throwing the paper flight objects by hand would vary in glide time and distance so that they can alter their design as needed.

The overarching theme of the how and why of the sky was further set to engage the students through the celebration of the Chippewa of the Thames First Nation's story of the Thunderbird. The students were also provided with bird flyer kits that were designed at the STEAM Centre on Corel Draw software and moi3D. After repeated flight tests of the various designs these bird flyer kits were then laser cut out of foam core and added metal washers to aid in the balancing. Students were encouraged to assemble and use art design to make their bird unique .Many took them home to complete and reported working on the designs with their family members. "The school partnership with STEAM is "bringing families together. Empowering students and engaging adults." -Jeff Clark, Antler River Elementary School teacher

0 Comments

News

STEAM Centre Awarded OTF grant

The Science of a Season

STEAM & The Community

STEAM SNAPSHOTS

Archives

Categories

Contact STEAM Centre

info@steameducation.ca
226-212-0048

Connect with STEAM Centre

STEAM Centre Newsletter Signup

News

STEAM Centre Awarded OTF grant

The Science of a Season

STEAM & The Community

STEAM SNAPSHOTS

Archives

Categories

Contact STEAM Centre

info@steameducation.ca​226-212-0048

Connect with STEAM Centre

STEAM Centre Newsletter Signup

info@steameducation.ca
226-212-0048