The young engineers at Beebe Middle School have been very busy. We had the privilege of going to listen to Governor Hutchinson speak about engineering at our campus on the very first day of the class. He spoke about all of the new Computer Science jobs being created in Arkansas. There is a big push to get young women into Computer Science courses so that they will have an equal opportunity to land these great jobs. We have great participation by our girls at Beebe Middle School. In fact, nearly half of the 5th grade engineering students are female. Because of the enthusiasm of the talented young ladies in our program, we applied for and received a grant to fund an all-girl robotics team. The grant was provided by the Robotics Education Competition Foundation. The girls will compete next February. We also received a grant for starting a new competition team. These grants are valued at over $2000.
What’s going on in class? We have the honor of being part of Project Lead the Way at the Middle School. They create the outstanding curriculum that is used in our classes. After learning about a movement disorder called cerebral palsy, the engineering students set out to design a foot orthosis prototype that would help a student with cerebral palsy walk. They wanted to make sure that the orthosis did not allow movement of the foot beyond 90 degrees, that it supported the ankle, and that it was comfortable. The prototype was built using common items.
We have spent the last couple of weeks learning how to create multi-view sketches. These sketches are part of an engineering notebook that is vital in the design process. We are currently learning how to dimension the sketches so that prototypes could be built based on our sketches.
Finally, our students have begun brainstorming a project that can be entered into Samsung’s Solve For Tomorrow contest. This is a nationwide contest that challenges students to show how STEM can be implied to help the local community. The winner of this contest will receive $150,000 worth of Samsung technology for their classroom.