Mini Maker STEAM Fest Challenges

 Prior to the Christmas Holidays, we launched our Mini Maker STEAM Fest Challenges. This activity marks the first step on the path to STEAM Fest 2022, which will take place later in the school year.

In the end, several students submitted their work for this activity.  We received quite a variety of projects, many of which were developed based on ideas taken from the Science Buddies website, while others were innovations the students designed and developed. themselves. 

At the ABC we very much value student choice,  agency and endeavour so it was fitting that we recognise and highlight the work of the students who not only engaged in various challenges over the past 2 months but also shared their final projects with us. 

On February 11th, each of these students were asked to visit the LRC, where they received a special, quite unexpected prize and a thank you from the organisers for taking part and for sharing their work. They can now choose whether to use their prizes to explore their favourite books or invest in further STEAM challenges at the Libreria Internacional.

Please do visit the STEAM Fest Mini Maker Challenge page for further details on this activity.

Bringing the Community Together Through Shared Events

 There has been a lot going on this year, often in the background in ICT and at the LRC. It is now the time of the year when we get to showcase some of that work.

Here are some of the highlights for the next two weeks: 

 

1.  Earth Day is this Thursday so we have included a few different activities on our website for the students to take part in this week or over the weekend with their families. 

2. DVA Voting will begin this Wednesday morning and close on Sunday April 25th 6pm. Emails will go out to staff and students tomorrow morning which contain the voting form. The form(which is closed until tomorrow morning) can also be accessed via the DVA Website. *Only members of the school community will be able to log in, view the videos and vote. 

We have included a short teaser for DVA which highlights certain aspects of each nominated video, which is viewable by anyone with the link.

A Look Ahead:

3. Next week is Book Week , but here is a sneak peak at what is going on behind the scenes. This is a special Book Week that has been put together by the member schools of the Salvadoran IB Schools group and several local organisations. We will be sharing the site with the ABC 

community, this Friday. The site itself contains an array of activities for students abnd staff to take part in over the course of the week. 

During Book Week, we are also running live online sessions with certain grades through the KS3 HoYs in addition to setting up a discussion panel with our  12th grade IB students and those in a school in Paraguay, through the Spanish department.

The International Book Store has set up an online book fair for staff and students as well and this to can be accessed directly from our website. 

4. Finally, we will continue promoting STEAM Fest as of next week with reminders about dates and requirements.

 

This will be the second time we have had to move both DVA and STEAM Fest online. Both have been revamped to meet the needs of online learning but STEAM Fest has is the event that has morphed the most. In developing this year's STEAM Fest we have done our best to ensure that relveant ICT project work has a place, as well as guided general challenges and guided open challenges as well. You can check out the 2021 Site as well as STEAM Fests past, here. 

Thanks for all of the hard work you do in promoting these school activities. 

The DVA, STEAM and LRC Teams greatly appreciate your support. 

DVA and STEAM Fest 2021

    ABC DVA 

​

Link to the Website

ABC Secondary STEAM Fest is Coming!

This year STEAM Fest will work a little differently and take place online.

In preparation, the STEAM Team has prepared a great many challenges for you to look through and take part in. There are Grade Level SDG challenges, General Challenges and you can even Build your very own challenges using the guidance on our website. All entries are individual this year due to our special circumstances.

This year we will include a judging panel full of wonderful ABC teachers who will help determine which of our wonderful ABC Makers attain  Bronze, Silver and Gold Level standards! The students whose projects are allocated the highest points by the judging panels will also be awarded a special prize.

Finally, we would like to issue a challenge to all Secondary ABC Students to design the STEAM Fest 2021 Logo and Slogan for the event. To be eligible, all entries for the Log/Slogan Competition must be sent to either Mrs. Garcia or Mrs. Serrano by March 15th. 

Please check out the STEAM Fest 2021 Webpage and watch our Promotional Video for further details on how to join the STEAM Team of student Makers, for STEAM fest 2021.

Finally, a reminder about LRC- Today  in History, is our weekly update with interesting facts for you and the students to enjoy.

A New Year-Same Modality

 We are back to school in the same online learning modality. Our new hybrid plan has been put on hold as COVID-19 numbers continue to rise word wide and locally.

The LRC has continued with the Books2Go initiative we have been running since late October and we are now working on our weeding plan for this year, the second book order and initiating conversations regarding our annual STEAM Fest as it is quite likely that it along with the Digital Video Awards will take place online. 

We are looking into the possibilities for comfortable 3D printed ear savers to use with masks when we are allowed back into school and will be doing some initial test prints with our brand new Makerbot over the next few weeks. Personally I prefer my quickly crocheted ear savers to plastic ones but giving this a go will give us a chance to try out the new printer and compare it to our existing CR-10s and XYZs as well as provide a service to our teachers.

I have downloaded a few recommended savers from the NIH in the USA and they will be the first ones we try out. 

Version 1

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STEAM Fest 2018

STEAM Fest

The event is open to students across Primary and Secondary and also includes winning projects from the 6th and 7th grade Science Fair. Special guests including schools and organisations around the country also attend as part of the STEAM Fest community outreach initiative. 

This year schools from as far away as Morazan and La Union are taking part along with schools from Santa Tecla and San Salvador.

The festivities kicked off at 7:30 this morning and ran until 12:20 pm. An innovative go-kart project was introduced this year. At 10:30 the access ramp next to the large pool was closed off and the races began.

The entire STEAM Fest event was streamed live on the ABC Facebook page.

 If you were unable to catch the live streams you can also them from the Facebook page. 

Here are a few pictures from Thursday evening when the STEAM Team and

Crew set up the Auditorium with the help of our wonderful maintenance people.

Click here to view all the media from the event.

Building STEAM Momentum

We Launched our 3rd annual STEAM Fest this week with a short Animoto teaser.

We love Animoto and have so or year. It lets us create short, dynamic videos on the go with a minimum of fuss.

Now that STEAM Fest has been launched we want to help our kids and possibly inspire them through weekly exposure to cool innovations from around the world. STEAM Fest is about innovating and solving problems and it is also empowering our kids, by providing the opportunities to dream, the tools and support to design, and often the materials with which to create and build their own innovations.


I would like to share our first Innovation Spotlight with you and ask that you encourage your children to not only dream but to discover ways to make those dreams reality through active learning experiences.

Please click here to view the video.

STEAM Fest 2017

ur Anual STEAM Fest was a huge success!

If you would like to read up on the prep, please click here.

This STEAM Fest, our school maker faire, was different in some ways than STEAM Fest 2016, in that the students defined the projects from day one. Last year, was our first attempt and we found that we ended up supplying a list of potential projects for students to sign up for. This year that wasn't necessary as staff and students had been through the process once before and had a good idea of what it is they would be taking on.

This year we tried something new. We live streamed our event to our School's Facebook pages. Several members of staff wandered the various venues with roaming cell phones and filmed, interviewed and talk with participants throughout the day, following a published schedule.

We found this really useful as we were able to open up the event to parents and families who were unable to attend. They were able to tune in o the event at given times to view the action.

Here is a short video from the auditorium, we took using Facebook Live Stream.




They say a picture speaks a thousand words.
Here is a link to our Flickr Gallery from the event. It speaks for itself.

STEAMing Along on Our Way to STEAM Fest 2016

This year's STEAM Fest is going to be bigger and better than last year's in a variety of ways. 

The number are in and the response has been overwhelming, from our  6th grade to 12th grade students.  Close to 100 students, from across Secondary have now formed teams and volunteered to plan and develop a STEAM project for this year's event. 

This doesn't take into account teachers, nor does it include the hundreds of  Primary students who will be working diligently in their lessons, on their projects as well. Upper Primary will present one final project per class, as well as several ICT projects, at this year's event.

The Logo Competition

Several students from both Primary and Secondary challenged themselves to design a new logo for this year's STEAM Fest, based on our new Motto which is: MAKEe a Difference, Think Globally, Act Locally!  The Logo Competition winners have been chosen and we have two of them.

The design below was created by combining both winning logos. These were selected from a collection of submissions as the ones that best illustrated our new Motto. 

BTW: You may recognise the last part of that motto. It isn't our own, in fact, we have borrowed it. If you would like to know more about this interesting quote you may want to start with this interesting  Wikipedia article about it.

Here is the winning announcement which will go out to students and staff this today.

STEAM Fest Preparation

Our second annual STEAM Fest event will take place on March 10th this year. In fact, STEAM Fest will officially kick off Science Week instead of closing it as it did last school year.
This year's motto is: MAKE a Difference-Think Globally, Act Locally

While we have been meeting as a core committee over the last few months, and promoted it in various ways around the school, the real action and visible preparatory activities have just gained momentum.

The kids were introduced to STEAM Fest prior to Christmas Holidays in order to start gathering up their ideas and building their teams. Upon return to school in January, student project sign up began for a spot at the Fair. The deadline to fill in the Google Form  was last Friday, January 13th however, we left the intentionally left the receiving responses option activated on the Google Form and it has paid off.  We have had a continuous flow of submissions over this past week as well.

We are taking things up a notch this Friday. The predominately 10th, 11th and 12th grade STEAM Team leaders who have been actively speaking to students across Secondary in Assemblies, will be running a Mini Maker Meet-Up at the cafeteria during lunch time. As soon as the bell rings they will roll down a mobile maker cart and run 2 different activities of their own choice,each.

These activities are designed to capture student interest, imagination and enable everyone to have a  'taste' of some of our newer Gadgets, and design activities as well as encourage additional groups to sign up a project.


Below are the photos from the event.
If you would like to learn more about STEAM Fest 2017 or STEAM Fest 2016 have a look at our Official Website.



Please click here to view the entire gallery on flickr.

STEAM Fest 2016

Our first ever STEAM Fest was a great success. 

The ABC and local community came together in a full scale celebration of STEAM. The projects were wonderful, and the energy crackled as the whole school, whole day event took centre stage across 3 different venues. The level of engagement and excitement was paramount, as student and staff presenters, and creative centre leaders from our school, as well as from around El Salvador, worked and interacted with students, staff, visitors and local dignitaries.

Here are some of the preliminary photos from the event. The organisers of the event issue a huge thank you to the hundreds of people that made it all possible! 
We now look forward to STEAM Fest 2017.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/48254552@N04/albums/72157662253275704

WAAM-We Are All Makers

Next week promises to be spectacular. Not only will Brain Awareness Week and Science Week come together, but this year they do so along with our community of makers, which will trigger an explosion of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics initiatives. The event is STEAM Fest and it promises to captivate, compel and inspire the community through creativity and innovation.

This is the first ever STEAM Focused event to take place at the ABC, which brings together the whole school, schools from the community, as well as local educational and STEAM based organisations.

Over 240 ABC Staff and students are directly involved, as are several local schools, international organisations and businesses.

The Fest or Faire opens on March 16th at 8:00, with a keynote delivered by the British Ambassador on the topic of British Science Week. The Ambassador will then award the prizes for the winning Primary and Secondary Science Faire projects. The event will run all day and end at 2:00, with the final Keynote delivered by via video, by one of our very own STEAM pioneers, Exabrit Roberto Melendez.

During the day students, staff and visiting teams will run exhibits, creative centres and in some cases, competitions. A total of 57 exhibitions and creative centres and 34 Science Fair finalist projects,  will fill the Auditorium and PAC, and spill over into the Auditorium Mezzanine and Drama Studio.

Classes from every year group will visit STEAM Fest during the course of the day and be able to engage in creative, active experimentation and learning. STEAM Fest promises to stimulate all the senses and build cognitive and community connections for everyone who involved.

Parents are invited to drop in during the day and visit the various STEAM Fest venues, which will be open all day, but close briefly at Secondary lunch and break times. Parking for the event will be on the basketball courts, which can be accessed through the Administration parking lot. 

We do hope to see you there and  invite you watch our latest teaser , which will give you a good idea of the sorts of activities that are taking place, in preparation for STEAM Fest 2016.

Finally we would like to thank our wonderful STEAM Fest sponsors, who play an important role in  STEAM Fest 2016.

STEAM Fest 2016

This year has been a year of transition for the LRC. Not only have we created a 3 tier maker system of drop ins, an extra curricular club, and making in our ICT PBL units, but we are about to launch our ver first STEAM Fest on Wednesday 16th of March.

This whole school event will be partnered with both Primary and Secondary Science Fairs, as well as Brain Awareness Week. It will provide a venue, not only for our school community, but for other schools and organisations around the country, at which to promote educational development and student innovation through STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, The Arts and Mathematics) projects.

STEAM as an educational approach, focuses on the whole child, through inquiry, problem solving, creativity, critical thinking and collaboration using Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths. STEAM focuses on the learning process and provides students with learning opportunities to investigate, plan, and develop meaningful open ended projects.

STEAM Fest will provide opportunities throughout the day for students to participate in creative activity centres, view expositions and interact with presenters. Please visit our STEAM Fest Site to learn more.