0 Comments
Members of the Mechanical Mustangs, Lutheran High’s robotics team, were invited to present at the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’s Core 4 STEM event on Tuesday, November 19. CORE4 STEM is a two-day celebration of education and career opportunities in “STEM” – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The CORE4 Expo brings students, parents, and educators together with high-profile STEM professionals, corporations, government agencies, universities, and colleges (https://www.sahcc.org/11-19-20-core-4-stem). LHS seniors who have been involved in robotics led demonstrations of our FTC robots, and talked with the students about their experience. Approximately 150 of the nearly 1,000 students on day one came through our event space and received a robot driver's license after passing a basic robot navigation course. Long time FIRST Senior Mentor, Mike Henry, who arranged for the booth space for ours and other FIRST robotics teams to demo for the students at the event was impressed with the passion, enthusiasm and care that our students exhibited in providing a meaningful and engaging experience for the 7th and 8th graders who came through the booth in waves of 25 or more every 20 to 30 minutes for from about 9:30 AM to almost 12:45PM. Our digital media class has been busy exploring different photography techniques this month! Starting with the rule of thirds, balance, leading lines, and other composition basics, they have completed various photo projects highlighting their special interests.
This past week, our students learned about lighting and helped create a mini “media day” for our senior cheerleaders and basketball players. After a few test sessions to get the setup just right, the digital media class utilized softbox and LED lights to capture some really awesome shots of our seniors! To wrap up the week, our Mustangs played around a bit with different shutter speeds and “light painting” techniques. They learned how to capture trails of light through various camera settings and had a lot of laughs! LHS students are preparing for the science fair, and on Monday after school, a current AP Biology student and two alumni assisted the students who have chosen to conduct research regarding microbiology. They partnered with the freshmen Biology and sophomore Chemistry scientists to revise their procedures and worked with them to prepare their petri dishes using aseptic technique.
Each year LHS students compete in the Alamo Junior Academy of Sciences and the Alamo Regional Science and Engineering Fair. These fairs bring in over 1,500 competitors across the Alamo region to network with like-minded peers and STEM professionals and compete for prizes and awards. Top performers in each category have the opportunity to advance to the state competition hosted at Texas A&M University. For the past four years, LHS has had top awards in the regional fairs including Grand Prize finalists and many Texas Science and Engineering Fair advancements. Completing a science fair project is part of our honors biology and chemistry coursework, and offers students the chance to interact with professional scientists as they present their projects. We love passing along a passion for doing science that Mrs. Rikard and Mr. Schuetze possess and hope to foster in their students. Presenting a real world project to be evaluated by an external expert is the kind of authentic learning that helps develop agency in students to do science of their own choosing and develop knowledge and skills related to presenting and defending the results and findings of their STEM project to panels of experts within the field of their project.  Innovation Lab is a time for students to pursue their passion, practice a skill, or try something new. Each Monday through Thursday students spend forty minutes in Innovation Lab in their choice of activity. From Cricut Crafts to robotics, or athletics to praise band, we try and offer something for everyone!
This year we have a new offering, Classic Car Restoration. After spending the first quarter learning some basics, our students in this selection have been working on a 1967 Pontiac LeMans during the second quarter. After cleaning it up, replacing the spark plug wires, checking the plugs, adding a little Marvel Mystery Oil to the cylinders, and hooking up a new battery, this week they turned the key and hoped for the best. Thankfully, all their hard work paid off, and the car fired up! What a blessing to watch these students bring a car back to life. There is still a lot of work to do before they can pull it out of the garage and watch it roll down the road, but every bit of that work will be a learning opportunity! |
RSS Feed
