FabSLAM

FabSLAM is another great grant opportunity that was offered by the Idaho STEM Action Center. The STEM Action Center has done a fantastic job of providing educators with grants that provide training and materials. Recipients of the FabSLAM grant received two days of training, a 3D printer, and the ability to participate in a FabSLAM Showcase.

FabSLAM is a 3D design challenge. This year's theme is transportation. Students work over the course of eight weeks to identify a problem and rapid prototype a solution. Student teams create a web page that explains the design process, presentation, and a prototype that uses at least some 3D printing.

The school librarian and I teamed up to offer this opportunity to our students in 5th through 8th grades. We allowed students to create and submit teams they created. They could also let us know they were interested in participating and we would place them on a team. One of the biggest challenge we faced was when could we have meetings so any interested students could participate. If we have meetings before or after school, it limits who can participate due to parents being able to provide rides. Therefore, we established weekly lunch meetings that are optional and created a FabSLAM team on Microsoft Teams for students to be able to collaborate outside of school. I will share updates as time permits. Hopefully, our seven teams will enjoy and learn from the process.

FabSLAM Timeline

FabSLAM Guide

FabSLAM Rubric

Week 4 #NASAMgUE

This was a busy week for #NASAMgUE at Galileo STEM Academy. If you would like more information about the highlights, just let me know.

• We received our SLED materials kit from NASA. 
• The teaching team had a webinar on Tuesday. The hour and a half webinar shared strategies for culturally responsive teaching, inquiry-based instruction, engineering design process, and 5E lesson plan. 
• We met before the webinar start time and looked at the kit, discussed our progress on outreach, and shared ideas for Friday's full team meeting with students. 
• We were also excited to hear from our NASA mentor on Tuesday. 

Tuesday was a busy day! The full #iNerdsMG team met on Friday morning, as usual. Students are developing a clearer picture of the challenge just like the teachers. There are twelve different jobs for the student groups. Some do not have any tasks until we can start testing and do our final planning. Student groups who had jobs to work on continued progressing in their work. Other students continued to learn more about microgravity. We will have a mentor from Boise State joining us next Friday. We are also hoping to have a chat with our NASA mentor on a conference or video conference call. There is a lot to do, organize, and prepare. It's still well worth the effort.

NASA SLED Kit Materials