In collaboration with Champaign Public Library, ENVISION hosted an after school program about polymers for the middle school students who visit CPL after school. The students rotated through the following activities:
Our goal was to introduce the kids to polymers. We had a great turnout (over 40 kids) and the activities were engaging and fun for the students!
ENVISION members helped South Side Elementary host their annual Science Night with 4 hands-on activities to introduce students to STEM topics. The 4 activities were:
A more complete description of each activity can be found here.
Thank you to the volunteers and to Sharlene Denos for their help in making this event possible!
With help from one of our members Dorothy Silverman, ENVISION members hosted a DIY Microscopy event at Champaign Public Library. This event is a new bioengineering-focused workshop where kids control mobile microscopes to engage with the Champaign Public Library’s microscopic world. We kicked off the first workshop iteration with 2 hands-on activities. In the first, “What’s in my snack?”, kids dissected and analyzed their afternoon snacks with the uHandy microscope and a smart phone. This activity engaged students with their personal world and interests, in this case their afternoon snack. It gave them the freedom to choose what they want to image, how they imaged it, and how they presented their findings. It was goal-oriented because they are ultimately adding their work to a collective portfolio.
The second activity “Mobile Micro Hunt” is a scavenger hunt challenging kids to solve riddles with a microscope. Using a Foldscope (fabricated with help from the CU FabLab) the students rotated through 8 interactive stations answering questions and analyzing items from down feathers to mold from a cupcake! Each student was given a Foldscope, a 50-cent microscope made with origami, a sample-collection booklet, and a map. Students used the map to go from station to station throughout the room. Each station had commonly found items in a library (dust, ants, magazine paper) that students analyzed to answer a few questions. This activity forced kids to get up and move, interact with one another, and problem solve. It also makes them see their standard environment, in this example the library, in a new way.
This workshop compliments the driving goals of ENVISION. First, it is a hands-on workshop that helps students learn about the science of their everyday lives, yet introduces them topics perhaps not studied in school. It incorporates art and writing into science. And finally, it uses inexpensive tools that even low-income students can procure. It also engages our ENVISION members, requiring helpers to fold the foldscopes, design infographic templates, maps, and riddles. Volunteers at the event will also learn how to encourage student self-learning.
Event Title: Science at the Market – Geometry Themed
Location: Urbana Farmers Market
Date: August 6th, 2016
Members of ENVISION introduced children at the Urbana Farmer’s Market to geometry through polydron geometry kits and simple origami. The visitors learned about Euler’s formula and surface area and were able to design various structures with the various pieces in the kit. They were then able to apply these ideas to origami — we made gorillas, pigs, dogs, swans, and cubes.
Matt created a powerpoint presentation to show the visitors how origami is applicable in research! The powerpoint can be viewed here.
Event Title: Urbana Middle School (UMS) Construction Camp Day 2 – Gumdrop Domes
Location: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Mechanical Engineering Laboratory
Date: August 1st, 2016
Members of ENVISION visited the students in the Urbana Summer Construction Camp at the Phillips Recreation Center to teach them about structural engineering. We performed the Gumdrop dome activity to learn about the strength of triangles vs square. At the end, the students had some free time to get creative with their structures!
Event Title: Urbana Middle School (UMS) Construction Camp – 3D Printing
Location: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Mechanical Engineering Laboratory
Date: August 1st, 2016
Members of ENVISION partnered with UMS to host 40 students aged 6-12 on a field trip to UIUC. The students were part of a Construction Camp hosted by the Urbana Middle School, ran by Andi Bonner. The students performed the SLA 3D Printing activity, and were given tours of the Ford RP Lab and Innovation Studio on campus to learn about all different kinds of 3D printing: fused deposition modeling, stereolithography, inkjet, and more!
Event Title: Science at the Market with Kindle the Flames
Location: Urbana Farmers Market
Date: July 30th, 2016
Members of ENVISION partnered with an educational outreach program called Kindle the Flames (KtF) who introduces young teens to robotics and programming. The motto of KtF is Spark a Reaction, Kindle the Flames. Learn more about them here! The group is transferring from Oklahoma City to Champaign and is interested in getting more involved with the community.
ENVISION volunteers helped KtF implement an activity at the Farmers Market, where children were able to control quadcopter and ground robots using video game remotes. The event was a success!
Event Title: Math & Summer Camp at Urbana Middle School (UMS), in partnership with POETS
Location: UMS
Date: June 14th, 2016
Members of ENVISION visited UMS to share a few more STEM activities with the students. The 6th & 7th graders made solar ovens out of pizza boxes and roasted marshmallows and hot dogs. The 8th graders used a polyhedra geometry kit to learn about Euler’s formula, surface area, and volume. The 8th graders then applied these concepts by making origami.
See the attached pictures and click the links below to see handouts from each activity:
Solar Ovens:
Polyhedra Geometry & Origami:
Event Title: Math & Summer Camp at Urbana Middle School (UMS), in partnership with POETS
Location: University of Illinois
Date: June 7th, 2016
The summer 2016 partnership with POETS kicked off with a great morning on the Engineering Quad at the University of Illinois. Students from UMS came to campus to learn about solar cars. We also reviewed the distance = rate * time formula, the equation for the circumference of a circle, and how the circumference can be used to calculate the distance traveled.
The students first built the solar cars indoors and took some measurements to prepare for speed measurements outdoors.
We then took the solar cars outdoors and predicted how long the cars would take to move a certain distance. Thankfully the sun was out to fuel the solar panels!
![20160607_102156[1]](http://publish.illinois.edu/envisionuiuc/files/2016/07/20160607_1021561-169x300.jpg)
Thank you to POETS and UMS for providing the solar car kits we used for the activity!
Click here to see the handouts we made for this solar car activity.
Event Title: Leal Science Night
Location: Leal Elementary, Urbana, IL
Date: April 29th, 2016
Members of ENVISION set up 5 tables at the Leal Elementary Science Night, where our theme was “Explore Engineering”. A description of each of our tables is included below:
