Groton STEAM Wing Update

Groton Jr. Sr. High School

GROTON STEAM UPDATE

November 1, 2018

Here we go!

As can be seen from the pictures, the Groton STEAM Lab is just about up and running. Although the space has yet to be made fully available, that hasn’t stifled any of the creativity or ingenuity of the Groton STEAM program.

The building trades crew is currently in the process of bending the arches for the greenhouses that are being built on the former skate park across the road from the high school. The location of the structure is laid out and the foundation posts are installed. The structural frame will hopefully be completed before the less than desirable weather settles into our region.

The team has already completed the benches and landscape for the Outdoor Classroom located approximately 100 yards South of the tennis courts on Route 38. The benches provide seating for up to 21 people located on a peninsula created by the Owasco Inlet. Moreover, the construction team has been on two educational field trips to date, traveling to Austin Machine in Cortland and Baker-Miller Lumber here in Groton. Both trips proved to provide fun and educational insight into the world of work. We have two more trips on the horizon, with a jaunt to Gutchess Lumber and Kennedy Hardwoods in Preble.

Students in the communications cluster, specifically the graphics design class, have been working on a logo design project for Groton Harvest. This is a real-world project for students to see what it is like to be an authentic graphic designer.

At the completion of this project, the student’s logos will be presented to a board from the Groton Harvest initiative with one being chosen as the actual design for the program. During the course of the project, students called upon skills learned from previous lessons in Adobe Illustrator. At the beginning of the year, the class completed a photography assignment on the Elements and Principles of Art and Design. Since then, the class has been working in becoming comfortable with Adobe Illustrator by completing a variety of lessons on the tools and their functions. The students created cartoon toucans in Illustrator following the completion of the variety of introductory tools lessons.

Currently, the computer programming group is discussing the design process, looking at products for users, receiving feedback, and developing items based on real-world needs. The class will be using these to build a basic social media app within a structured javascript framework.

So far, the cluster has created websites, created an online greeting card, and have created four (4) short video games using javascript.

In the engineering cluster, students are currently using 3-D Modelling software to design a gear system for a solar system model that will consist of the eight planets orbiting the Sun at the correct relative rotational speeds. The model is currently being 3-D printed and they will soon assemble it.

Currently, they are learning to use VeX materials which they will use for several projects later in the course, including control systems and robotics.