Wickedly Hot Kick Off to Week 3!

We had an awesome Day 1 of our 3rd week of Camp this month! It was a pretty hot day, but the 120 students were very diligent about drinking water throughout the day. Check in went really well today…Thanks so much for everyone’s assistance and patience this morning as we got all campers checked in!

Just a note about the consent and assent forms that we ask for every year. Our camp is subsidized by an NSF grant that requires research and reporting to the agency.  The purpose of the research is to develop a camp model that promotes STEM careers to students and can be replicated. We also look at students attitudes towards STEM and the impact of our activities. Without this grant and consent and assent to participate the camp simply would not exist. We never report any names or any individual data…it’s always aggregated together! You can read about some of our work here.

We have a goal to post a blog post each night this week with some highlights from the day and some conversation starters. [Admittedly, our family obligations have been great this summer, so bear with us please 🙂 ] The conversation starters are meant to help you get over the “What did you learn today?” “Nothin’” or <shrugging the shoulders> we often see with our school-age students. We’ll also post a link to the photos we are taking throughout the week. If at any time you want a photo removed that is of your child, please let us know and we’ll be happy to take it down.

Please make sure and check twitter throughout the day this week – https://twitter.com/SeeBlueSTEMCamp – we’ll post more pictures and updates throughout the day the rest of the week.

Today in the red and blue groups, they ventured all the way across campus to discover things about their nervous system, look at the human organs in the medical science education center, and conduct some investigations around introreceptors, contracting muscles and other fun stuff! Many of them brought home body tracings they did and some of the major nerve pathways drawn. Be sure to ask about the crawfish investigations tonight! They got to see nerve impulses in action.

The yellow and green groups were busy today with Dr. Thomas and making flying objects. They used the engineering design process and lots of mathematics (surface area) and physics to create a flying object out of different types of materials and did some challenges around how far they could get it to fly. They brought home some of the creative flying inventions today.

In robotics today for all groups, it was building day. All the students are doing EV3 robots this year. Today they focused on building their robots and learning about how the different parts and pieces work together. Some of the groups flew through building and were able to start on some programming. Tomorrow they will all dive into the programming and start some of our challenges. For the challenges, we use a blend of our own curriculum our robotics instructors have created and some of the FLL challenges, including the new one for this year.

In their words…

Each day we’ll post some excerpts from the students’ reflections of what they learned each day at the STEM Content session. We don’t correct for spelling or grammar in these 🙂

  • If you got hit in the kidnesy you have to pee
  • I did not know about newrons, axons, bulbs, dendriles, and synapes.
  • I loved examining old body parts
  • I did not know the brain is heavy.
  • I learned about aerodynamics and gravity.
  • flight=drag lift thrust
  • more weight in the front of the plane will make it glide more.
  • I learned how exactly planes fly and how weight distribution affects their flight.
  • I learned how flaps on the plane affect how air molecules hit the plane.

Conversation Starters… 

We know your child is getting to the age where it might be like pulling teeth to get them to talk about their day beyond “It was fine.” “It was fun.” “I didn’t do anything.” So, each day we’ll post some suggested conversation starters centered on camp activities or STEM-related themes.

Red/Blue Groups

  • How do muscles in your arm move? What is the path of the signals?
  • How do you create electricity with your arm?
  • What was the most interesting thing you learned about the human organs today?
  • Tell me about how you assembled your robot. What is your robot’s name? What do you think you will get your robot to do when you start programming it?

Yellow/Green Groups:

  • What makes an airplane go into the air?
  • What are the different types of airplanes you created today?
  • What did you take into consideration when you created your airplane? How did that work for you? What are some other things you tried?
  • Tell me about how you assembled your robot. What is your robot’s name? What do you think you will get your robot to do when you start programming it?

Photo of the Day…

Each day we’ll post a camp highlight.  Click the picture and it will take you to the weekly photo album. Please note that we try to capture pictures of all the campers, but we cannot guarantee that we will get every single one. We try our very best to though! Also we are STEM teachers and not full time photographers, so our pictures are not perfect and we leave them unedited, so if you love to edit photos…feel free! If there is a photo you wish to have removed, please email me and we’ll take it down!

Bridges to build and DNA to observe!

It was another exciting day in the life of a STEM and robotics camper! The sea of green and blue shirts were an awesome sight and generated some great buzz amongst the faculty and staff on campus! The students are doing a great job using their manners and were great listeners today.

Vex Robotics

The groups finished building the Clawbots today and dove into learning to code on RobotC. Some have had a little bit of experience on RobotC, but most have not. RobotC is different than most of the students’ prior computer programming experience, so it takes a little bit to get the hang of it. They will dive deeper into the coding tomorrow and dig into some great challenges! Overall, they have really enjoyed getting to learn about a different robot and one that requires more building and understanding of moving parts than compared to the EV3 or NXT robots.


Red/Blue Groups

They spent half of their day with Dr. Testa extracting DNA from a strawberry! They were very careful scientists with their tools and were amazed at what the DNA looked like! They also explored different types of DNA and how scientists use DNA to look at what living things are made of.

Yellow/Green Groups

It was bridge building day with Dr. Thomas! For a creative warm up, the students had to build the tallest free-standing structure they could, with very limited supplies. Then they moved on to bridge building, where they talked about supply and demand and material costs. After weighing through all their options, they had to build the sturdiest bridge with the cheapest cost. We had some amazing, creative, and sturdy bridges today!

Robotics for Elementary

All the technology was working today, so the camp staff were extra-thrilled! They got into some cool building challenges and really are getting the hang of programming their robot to do different things. There was lots of dancing, high-fives, and positive words and excitement throughout the day as their confidence increased with programming.

In their words…

  • I learned that you can get DNA out of things.
  • That everything that is on the world is made of the things on the periodic table.
  • The middle [of a bridge] is not the strongest part.
  • I learned to proberly (properly) + creadivly (creatively) bild (build) a bridge.
  • if the bridg(e) falls you can all ways fix it.
  • I learned about strcutures. and also learned to keep trying
  • that evrybody (everybody) has divrint (different) DNa’s.
  • that you can all ways fix it.
  • How to desighsin (design) different things.
  • Yes [I would like to learn more], because I want to see other fruit and people’s DNA.

Conversation Starters…

Yellow/Green Groups

  • What do bridges need to be strong?
  • How did you decide what materials to use for your bridge?
  • How did you decide on your design for your bridge?
  • How did your bridge do when you tested it?
  • How tall was your tower you built?
  • What did you want your robot to do today? How did you get your robot to do what you wanted it to do?

Red/Blue Groups

  • What is DNA?
  • What things have DNA?
  • How did you extract DNA from the strawberry?
  • What did it look like?
  • What did you want your robot to do today? How did you get your robot to do what you wanted it to do?

Vex Robotics

  • How different was it to build the Clawbot compared to the EV3 (or other robot they’ve built)? What kind of tools did you have to use?
  • How are you feeling about programming in RobotC? What makes it different from other computer programming you’ve done?
  • What did you want your robot to do today? How did you get your robot to do what you wanted it to do?

Picture of the Day…

Successful Kick off to Week 2!

stem camp logo 2016We had beautiful weather to kick off the second of our two weeks of 2016 UK See Blue STEM Camp! We are very excited to welcome 217 campers this year to camp! One hundred forty-five of them started today! Registration went very well this morning and we really appreciate everyone’s patience in getting all the forms UK requires turned in. You all are awesome!

Just a note about the consent and assent forms that we ask for every year. Our camp is subsidized by an NSF grant that requires research and reporting to the agency.  The purpose of the research is to develop a camp model that promotes STEM careers to adolescents and can be replicated. We also look at students attitudes towards STEM and the impact of our activities. We do not collect test scores or anything similar for your students nor do they have to be a Fayette County student to participate. Without this grant and consent and assent to participate the camp simply would not exist. We never report any names or any individual data…it’s always aggregated together!

We will post a blog post each night this week with some highlights from the day and some conversation starters. The conversation starters are meant to help you get over the “What did you learn today?” “Nothin’” or <shrugging the shoulders> we often see at the adolescent age. We’ll also post a link to the photos we are taking throughout the week. If at any time you want a photo removed that is of your child, please let us know and we’ll be happy to take it down.

IMG_7161 reducedYellow/Green Groups

Today the students split up and 1/2 saw Dr. Bruce Walcott and the other 1/2 saw Dr. Isabel Escobar. (If you like TED talks, you can view hers here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-wbHD77kMWE) In both sessions students were immersed in the wonderful world of engineering…using their hands to build and explore just as engineers do.

Red/Blue Groups

Today the students got to experience the awesome world that Dr. Robin Cooper immerses them in! The students got to see a real heart, lungs, and brain today. They got to put probes on themselves to measure the electricity going through their bodies. They also got IMG_7192 reducedto view and make conjectures about larvae and other fruit fly stages when they were exposed to different colors of light.

All four groups…

In robotics, students started by engineering their robots. They got to build their robot and get to know it. They always love this part, but we’re eager to continue moving them on to basic programming challenges. We have some exciting new challenges planned for them this week!

In their words… Each day we’ll post some excerpts from the students’ reflections of what they learned each day at the STEM Content session. We don’t correct for spelling or grammar in these 🙂 

BLUE & RED – Dr. Cooper

What did you learn about today that you did not know before?
  • You can do more with flies than just kill them
  • I learned that the certain type of mutated fly we used brain was affected by blue lights. The blue light stimulated their nerves therefore after a while paralyzing them
  • I learned that we don’t inhale to take in more air, but cause the acididty in our blood increased
  • I learned that if you are dehydrated then youre blood gets thicker
  • I learned that electrods can close a open circet by sensing your nerve signals
  • One thing i learned is that salt acts as a buffer against CO2
  • When you smoke some of your organs are larger than people who didn’t smoke
  • That scientists use fruit flys to cure about 60 desseses
IMG_7212 reducedWhat did you like about what you learned today?
  • We got to look threw a microscope
  • I liked learning that humans in the future could be treated by light
  • The real life models such as brain, lungs, and spine
  • I like when we learned about blood and organs and how they work and how to keep them healthy
Would you like to learn more about this topic?
  • Yes, i want to learn more about the human body, because it is so very intresting
  • Yes. because i want to see if you can modify other animals
  • What happens when you use red light on the flies. because we did not get to try it
  • Yes it is interesting that flys have the same leg muscles as us
GREEN & YELLOW – Dr. Walcott
What did you learn about today that you did not know before?
  • I learned about the different types of engineering and what causes buoyancy. i also learned about how anechoic chambers work
  • I learned that there was a girl who built the first ac
  • That there is a type of floor that when you stand on it you dont feel any vibrations from the regular floor
  • A concrete boat can float
  • The flavors of engineering, such as: civil, biomedical, mechanical, etc.
IMG_7184 reducedWhat did you like about what you learned today?
  • I liked the anechoic chamber because it was relaxing, the types of engineering because I know I don’t have to do all types of engineering, and I liked experimenting w/ buoyancy
  • The tour of the engineering departments
  • We learned by hands-on activities rather than a worksheet
Would you like to learn more about this topic?
  • Yes because i think engineers get to do whatever they want to build & i think some people have really cool designs
  • Yes. it was ver fun, and is beneficial to our society
GREEN & YELLOW – Dr. Escobar
What did you learn about today that you did not know before?
  • Whats in diapers and that food can be chemestry
  • I learned that the chymical engeneers also work with food not just everyday stuff
  • I learned that many things contain polymers even some surprising things
  • I learned that sodium polyacrylate, when mixed with liquid, becomes gel-like and is used in diapers
What did you like about what you learned today?
  • I liked the exeriments and using different chemicals to see a reaction
  • It was fun to do experiements with sodium polyacrylate
  • I like that i learned a variety of things that have to do with the job of a chemical engineer, and that i now know about a new, intriguing option for my future
  • I like that we did many hands-on activities as well as relations to real life
Would you like to learn more about this topic?
  • Yes it is quite interesting learning about polymers and reactions
  • I would because i like to experiment with different chymicals
  • Yes because I get to learn all about the things I use every day and the value of it
  • Yes, because i want to learn more about how does the sodium polyacrylate get into solid that quick
  • Yes because i know now that chemical engineering is very versatile and has a very wide variety
  • I absolutely would. i love learning new things about how the world works and different compounds and mixtures as well

Conversation Starters… We know that your child is getting to the age where it might be like pulling teeth to get them to talk about their day beyond “It was fine.” “It was fun.” Each day we’ll post some suggested conversation starters centered on camp activities or STEM-related themes.

Yellow/Green – Dr. Walcott:

  • Tell me about how you assembled your robot. Did you follow instructions? Did you just try to figure out what parts went together?
  • Is there a particular field of engineering that you think might interest you?
  • How many pennies did your boat hold? If you could build it again, what would you do differently?

Yellow/Green – Dr. Escobar:

  • What happened when you mixed the powder and water and turned it upside down?
  • What does a chemical engineer do?
  • Is there a particular field of engineering that you think might interest you?
  • Tell me about how you assembled your robot. Did you follow instructions? Did you just try to figure out what parts went together?

Red/Blue Groups:

  • How did your fruit flies react to light? What did they do? How did you measure their movement?
  • What was your favorite body organ you learned about? What kinds of things affect its size?
  • Tell me about how you assembled your robot. Did you follow instructions? Did you just try to figure out what parts went together?

Photo of the Day… Each day we’ll post a camp highlight. Click here to go to the pictures. Please note that we try to capture pictures of all the campers, but we cannot guarantee that we will get every single one. We try our very best to though! Also we are STEM teachers and not full time photographers, so our pictures are not perfect and we leave them unedited, so if you love to edit photos…feel free! 

IMG_7226 reduced

Optical Illusions and 3D Pens!

IMG_6737 reducedToday was quite exciting with Dr. Jen Eli. She had the students create and experiment with several different optical illusions. Then she had them creating mathematical models (and other models!) with 3D pens. The students really enjoyed today’s creative outlet session; some probably brought some of the STEM art home with them today!

IMG_6831 reducedIn robotics, they began their programming and started some basic challenges. While Lego has some really nice basic challenges to begin with, Mr. Evans and Mr. Randall like to change it up each year and provide students with challenges more appropriate towards the final challenge they will be doing at the end of the week. So today they worked on driving around curves without hitting walls. There were lots of great successes!

In their words…

What did you learn about today that you did not know before?

  • How to draw a art that tricks the eye. How to use a 3-d pen to make things
  • How neutral colors impact optical illusions.
  • That complementary colors are what mostly make illusions pop out
  • I learned about the parts of a 3-d pen

IMG_6793 reducedWhat did you like about what you learned today?

  • That optical allutions [sic] take the mind and eye to work
  • I liked learning about how 3-D pens work
  • I like making the 3d shapes
  • I used the 3-D pen to draw a shape and decorate it

Was there anything you did not like about what you learned today?

  • Nope! Except that we had to stop! I could have gone on forever!
  • No, i had a great time!

Would you like to learn more about this topic?  Why or why not?

  • Yes, because it is AWESOME + FUN!
  • Yes because i want to learn more about what shapes you could do
  • Yes i like making 3d stuff
  • Yes because there’s so much to learn and it interests me

IMG_6779 reducedConversation Starters…

  • What is an optical illusion?
  • How do colors affect optical illusions?
  • What did you make with the 3D pen?
  • How does the 3D pen work?
  • How could you use a 3D pen to build a model?

Photo of the Day… We took our STEM Camp photo today! Not all of our helpers are in here, but this is all the students and some of our helpers! Aren’t they a great looking bunch this week? Click here to view the rest of the photos from yesterday and today!

Week 1 Group Photo reduced

Ending on a high note!

IMG_2384 copyIt’s hard to believe that we’re already at the end of the week! Today was an even busier day since it was the end of the week and the students were extra alive today from all the activity this week. The blue and red and groups got to experience Dr. Brett Criswell’s wonderful awe-inspiring world of nanotechnology. From experimenting with peach fuzz and different types of plants, to talking about polymer-chains found in over-the-counter indigestion medicines, the students were taken to the teeny tiny world of nano-land. They had a great time conducting different experiments and even remembered such things as Congo Red! In robotics, they wrapped up an awesome week with finishing many challenges in the green city challenges. There were lots of screams of excitement, joy, and high fives going around as the students became more communicative within their groups and more confident in their programming skills. We tried to capture some video of it today. Clicking on the video will take you to our YouTube Channel where you can view more videos from today.

IMG_2359 copyThe yellow and green groups got to experience the wonderful world of engineering with our resident engineering expert, Dr. Bruce Walcott. The students got to tour the engineering complex at UK and got to go into many of the different laboratories that UK College of Engineering has. There were faculty and graduate students onsite in the laboratories so they were able to show the students some of their latest research discoveries and experiments and let the students tinker with some of the lab materials as well. Seeing real research happening is always inspiring to the students and they really ask great questions that sometimes even stump the researchers! Of course the favorite again was the sound proof room. I’m not sure what it is about that room, but they always enjoy it! They also built mini motors and talked about simple machines with Dr. Walcott. They really enjoyed the various engineering design activities and applying their content skills. They ended their engineering time with some teamwork activities, including the favorite Hula Hoop Challenge. Students often forget that in the real world, most of our work is done in teams and communication is vitally important. So the students had a great time learning to communicate and talk to each other more.

IMG_2361 copyLego robotics for the yellow and green groups was much more successful today. We even had a couple of groups do all the challenges on the Space Challenge! The Space Challenge and EV3 programming is definitely a lot different from the NXT programming, so some were frustrated a couple of days ago, but were much more confident today. It was such a joy to watch them grow over the past week in this area. They really enjoyed the Space Challenge…it is definitely more complex than the Green City they were used to before!

We all had such a great and enjoyable week with the students. It would not at all have been possible without the tremendous staff that we had this year! I had a bit of a panic moment when (because of snow days) we decided to combine both camps into one week; but some quick creative thinking brought on an awesome opportunity for our preservice teachers in our middle and secondary programs and our doctoral students at UK. Some of the college students took a Robotics class with me prior to camp starting and assisted Mark Evans and Robbie Randall in the robotics rooms and some of the college students just wanted to help out with the camp. I would like to take the opportunity to introduce you to and thank our staff this year.

We have a great group of graduate students in the STEM Education department at UK and these 5 are no exception!

IMG_4756 copy
L-R Back – Kayla Blyman, Floyd Broughton, Thomas Roberts; L-R Front – Maranda Miller, Marla Lemmon

Our inservice teachers are priceless! Robbie and Mark take the lead on the robotics, Brooke (Green Group), Tavin (Yellow Group), Megan (Blue Group), and Candice (Red Group) were our team leaders this year, of course Craig is the inventor, creator, and director of the See Blue STEM Camp. The camp is a way for our inservice teachers to stay connected to the university, provide high quality mentoring to the preservice teachers involved, and even have the opportunity to engage and learn new content and materials alongside the students.

IMG_4765 copy
L-R Back – Robbie Randall (Beaumont MS), Mark Evans (Jessie Clark MS), Candice Cprek (Henry Clay HS); L-R Front – Brooke Powers (Beaumont MS), Tavin Feheley (Jessie Clark MS), Craig Schroeder (Beaumont MS). Not pictured – Megan Vogel (Tates Creek MS)

Since we were going to 1 week with 144 students, we knew we had needed to have more help. It was an obvious choice to offer the opportunity to the preservice (future teachers) middle and secondary mathematics and science students in our College. Through this unique experience, they got to work with the students in a smaller, low-stakes setting that allowed them to really practice their classroom management skills, their questioning techniques, and work on developing appropriate relationships with students. They were mentored through this process by the high quality inservice teachers as well as the college faculty we had involved. Although they were exhausted by the end of the week, they all stated this was the best learning experience they have had thus far and really enjoyed the opportunity to grow as future educators and felt they gained a lot of STEM content knowledge alongside the students as well.

IMG_4767 copy
L-R Back – Andre Henderson, Brian True, Alex Freeman, William Schooler, Michael Delfino, Eric Garwood, Zeke Edwards; L-R Middle – Ben Wolfe, Maria Richards, Brittney Denton, Lydia Speler, Amy Allen, Tyler Waters, Chris Rogers, Clay Rehmel, Shelby Cameron; L-R Front Row Katherine Poe, Alanna Briggs, Jamie Kosel, Michael Plas

Craig, myself, Christa Jackson, Mark Evans, Gabe Brown, and Bruce Walcott are the team that make up the directors of the camp. We do everything from logistics to food to parent communication to anything else that needs to be done to help things run smoothly.

L-R Craig Schroeder, Christa Jackson, and Margaret Schroeder; Not pictured- Mark Evans, Bruce Walcott, and Gabe Brown
L-R Craig Schroeder, Christa Jackson, and Margaret Schroeder; Not pictured- Mark Evans, Bruce Walcott, and Gabe Brown (they were making sure everything was running smoothly while we were snapping pictures!)

Conversation starters…

Red and Blue Groups

  • What is nanotechnology?
  • What kinds of things repel water? Why do they need to repel water?
  • How do you make magic sand?
  • Peaches reflect water? I’ve never heard about that. Tell me more!
  • What challenge(s) did you complete in the Green City Challenge?
  • How do you and your partner(s) work together to program and complete the challenges?
  • What was your favorite part about STEM Camp?
  • Out of all the things you learned this week, what was the most interesting?
  • What career do you want to pursue when you get older? What kinds of classes are you going to need to take in order to be successful in your career?

Yellow and Green Groups

  • What is a sound proof room? What makes it sound proof?
  • What was your favorite lab you visited? What made it your favorite?
  • What challenge(s) did you complete in the Space Challenge?
  • How do you and your partner(s) work together to program and complete the challenges?
  • What was your favorite part about STEM Camp?
  • Out of all the things you learned this week, what was the most interesting?
  • What career do you want to pursue when you get older? What kinds of classes are you going to need to take in order to be successful in your career?

Video of the Day… This video really exemplifies why we do this and why we feel it’s important for students to have these opportunities.

Check out the Camp Pictures here

Check out videos Here

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter – @seebluestemcamp

We thank you for a wonderful week with your students and hope you have an enjoyable rest of the summer!

Next year’s camp dates are tentatively set for June 8 – 12, 2015 at the University of Kentucky Colleges of Education and Engineering for rising 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.