7th Annual STEM Summit: MakersLearn
ITTIP hosted the 7th Annual STEM Summit on Thursday, January 30th. The theme was, MakersLearn. Dr. Mano Talaiver, director of ITTIP, set the stage for the summit with her presentation on what qualities are found in these makers, or inventive thinkers. Originally the Institute had Joey Hudy, as the first speaker. He was named “One of the Top 10 Smartest Kids on the Planet”, by Make magazine. However, he had to decline last minute as the President of the United States invited him to the State of the Union Address. This did not stop ITTIP from finding another outstanding maker to talk about his inventiveness. The Institute was lucky enough to have Tenith Adithyaa, a junior in high school from rural India, Skype in to talk to attendees about his Banana Leaves Technology. Tenith will be attending the International Science and Engineering Fair in the United States in April.
The attendees were then presented with more students talking about their STEM experiences. These were middle school students from Charlotte City and Albemarle County Public Schools. The students talked about their work and collaboration with UVA’s Dr. Glen Bull, Professor of Instructional Technology in the Curry School of Education. Both teachers and administrators also shared their views and observations during this initiative for recreating historical inventions with 3D printing.
After lunch, STEM Specialists, Stephanie Playton and Paula Leach, got people on their feet with some hands-on learning with Makey Makey. They also showed some quick demos of other STEM learning tools, and shared an online document with additional K-12 STEM Learning Tools. Their presentation was followed by Mohamed Jaffaralim, cofounder of MathDisk, and NASA’s Professional Development Coordinator, Dr. Kimberly Brush. To learn more about the STEM Summit presentations, visit ITTIP’s online February Newsletter or go to http://www.stemva.org/ for posted presentations.
ITTIP would especially like to thank all the presenters and attendees for making the 7th Annual STEM Summit a success. Even after competing with the weather forecast, school cancelations and delays, we had representatives from several SVRTC counties, including: Appomattox, Brunswick, Buckingham, Charlotte, Cumberland, Hopewell, Prince George, Sussex, Lunenburg
Additional attendees from Danville’s Institute for Advanced Learning and Research and Longwood’s faculty also took part in this year’s summit.
If you would like to see pictures from the event, please visit ITTIP’s picture gallery.
