STEM at NWS
STEM Club at Northwood School is now in its fourth year. It started as a robotics club with ten students and taught the students about programing and making small robots travel the rooms and hallways avoiding objects or even following students around the building. This weekly program has evolved, now including some basic electronic circuit building such as simple devices like animated Halloween displays all the way to building simple gaming and radio kits.
Following the themes of the school-year STEM Club, we have also developed a four-week summer program. This program is more intensive than the school year sessions since the meetings are daily. The content of the summer program and STEM Club are coordinated whenever possible – continuing the most engaging projects and making changes as needed. We average about eight to ten students who are invited based on their aptitude as well as desire to learn new STEM skills. Our students learn coding, electronic fundamentals, soldering, robotic construction, model rocketry, aspects of amateur radio, and much more.
This year’s STEM Club is working on two year-long projects. First, we are designing and building a weather station that will provide data on conditions at the school. We are hoping the station data can be used by students to prepare weather reports for broadcast to classrooms. We hope to have the station operating by the end of this school year.
The second project, still at the brainstorming stage, is the construction of an amateur radio station that would be able to reach stations all over the world. This could also potentially be used as an emergency communications station in case of an event that would require a stand-alone, off the grid system.
We have high hopes and expectations for the STEM Club and summer program and are very pleased with the progress so far.
~Mr. Robert & Mr. Levergood