Outreach. |
The Key Elements.
Presentation Skills.Having good presentation skills is something that will help you look more professional when presenting. Tips for professional presentation skills may include:
|
Planning.We like to make sure we know what is happening around our community.
Following STEM-related pages on social media can help you stay up-to-date. Conferences are often great places to showcase the world of STEM to everyone involved. Get in touch with middle schools, high schools, organizations, etc. so you can reach as many people as possible about STEM. Many schools will be glad to have you encourage students to partake in this field of study for their future. Planning allows us to be as active around our community as possible. Visiting local libraries or watching the news allows you to become aware of STEM-related events throughout your community, allowing you to reach many people within your area. Having an idea of what you're wanting to spread to your community allows you to know where you are willing to spread your awareness of STEM, while others will also share a common interest. |
Know Your Audience.Knowing who you are presenting to is something to take into consideration when you reach out to others.
Some things to look at is,
|
Promoting STEM.
|
Teaching Others Comes First.Rather than going all out to win our competitions, our primary focus is the learning experience for others. We try and teach others teamwork skills, how to overcome challenges, and ways to have a successful future with however they choose to live it.
|
I find that a future in the STEM field is a great way to bring forth the infinite possibilities of change in a technologically filled world. ~ Alex Morales
Mentoring.
As of right now, VEX Statix mentors a total of 6 FIRST Tech Challenge Teams all around CCISD (Corpus Christi Independent School District, and distributes maker-spaces throughout our community to middle schools and elementary schools. With this, we are trying to expand STEM. Right now, our goal is to get at least 3 more high schools in our district to start FTC teams, allowing for an extended reach into the world of STEM.
What have we done in our community?
Kaffie Middle School's Science Night
10/1/19 - We were invited to come promote STEM at Kaffie Middle School's Science Night. This was our first outreach as a team on VEX Statix, and it was a great opportunity to introduce our new members on how to present. Many people were interested in what we had to say about robotics and how to improves awareness of STEM fields. The two main members who were taking lead role in presentation that day were Derik Lopez and Jared Vieyra. The two of them mainly talked about the design process of our robot and explained thoroughly step-by-step of our lift system and intake. On the other side of table, was Anthony Odvina. Anthony went over our Engineering Notebook and notebooks from previous years. Some things Anthony showed our audience was fundraising, context of notation, physics, and mathematics. Furthermore, Henry Crawley was talking to the audience about how we promote STEM in our community and ways for other people to do the same. He referenced other STEM related challenges such as: the FIRST Tech Challenge, FIRST Lego League, VEX IQ, Arduino, and many more. In conclusion, this was a great opportunity for us to take notes and improve our ways of presentation, and promote STEM.
|
|
Kaffie Middle School's Robotics Party
|
10/11/2019 - Three members of our very own, VEX Statix, went by to Kaffie Middle School to help them out with robotics. While at Kaffie, we were met with 3 teams of students, there was a team of each grade level (This helped us figure out how formal and serious we had to be with each group).
When talking to the 6th graders, we went over how to build their first robot and worked with them through each step to go through. In the 7th grade section, We helped them add their wheels onto their robot and helped them decide where exactly to put their wheels. In the 8th grade section, we went over their engineering notebook, and asked them thorough questions of what their robot did. 8th grade is where we mainly paid attention to as they are the older group and will also be going into high school next year. In their engineering notebook we came face to face with their sketches right off the back. We corrected this by telling the team that they should always start off with who they are and their goal for this year. Before going to each group separately, we showed them a presentation of our website and what things to include when they are trying to reach out to others. We gave them our contact info if they ever needed help with anything or have any questions for us. |
The Corpus Christi Technology Conference
11/07/2019 - VEX Statix was invited to a Technology Conference where many businesses and companies came to show their products and get in contact with others. This was a great opportunity to promote VEX Robotics and make a name for ourselves. While there, we talked to many teachers about how they can start getting students involved with STEM at a young age, we introduced them to maker-spaces, FLL, VEX IQ, and many other STEM related activities. Along with this, we even got asked if we wanted to have professional engineers come to mentor us and give us advice on our robotics, programming, and engineering notebook. Derik Lopez, Alex Morales, and Jared Vieyra all showed our audience a more sophisticated version of a robot than last outreach, we were able to show them how our robot lifts, and the hardware and software we used to accomplish that. Overall, we believe this was a great way to let other people know what we do, and how we do it.
|
|
The Men4Stem Conference
10/17/19 - One big Event our VEX team participates in is Men4Stem. Men4Stem is an event coordinated by 6 CITGO Innovation Academy students, one of which is the leader of VEX Statix. We gathered 14 different Middle Schools each with an average of 25 students from those schools, and all 200 CITGO Innovation Academy Students. Men4Stem was made to promote what STEM has to offer by allowing students to show others what we do, such as Civil Engineering, Computer Science, IED, POE, EDD, Aerospace Engineering, Architectural Engineering, and some professors and students from Texas A&M Corpus Christi and Del Mar Community College came to present to incoming highschoolers. This is one of the biggest events hosted every year in CCISD (Corpus Christi Independent School District).
|