Wayne County Schools Career Center hosts STEAM summer camp
A summer camp for kids in grades three through eight was recently held at Wayne County Schools Career Center. The 2021 STEAM summer camp featured a collaborative project for students to build a VEX IQ robot.
Wayne County Schools Career Center (WCSCC) has hosted STEAM summer camps for kids in Wayne, Ashland, and Holmes counties since 2019. This year, STEAM summer camps took place over four sessions during the last week in July and the first week in August. Students were split into groups of grades three through five and grades six through eight. A collaboration between a variety of local organizations, the camp featured the opportunity for students to work in teams building VEX IQ robots with an emphasis on both the technical aspects and the cooperative communication aspects of teamwork.
STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) camps bring together elements of design and engineering along with creative problem solving to challenge kids to work collaboratively with peers. Drew Fuller, an instructor with WCSCC, was one of the camp teachers. Fuller told The Daily Record in an article that he prefers the hands-on experience of lab learning to classrooms and paperwork. "Everything we do is just, it's so hands-on; it's so interactive for them. And the ownership really is on them, like we don't spoon-feed them information and expect them to memorize it and take a test or anything," Fuller said.
The Tri-County Educational Service Center presented this year's STEAM camp, which along with the robotics build, offered skills challenges and instruction in 3-D printing and CNC technology. Career Connections Consultant with Tri-County Educational Service Center, Beth Gaubatz, emphasized that the camp is an opportunity to expose kids early to STEAM education and hopefully spark interest in continuing a path to a STEAM field. "We wanted to get many students to be able to be involved, and see if they have an interest in this, so that's why we plan the camp for upper elementary and middle school, for them to really get that beginning spark of interest," Gaubatz said in The Daily Record piece.
The cost for the STEAM summer camp was $50 per child, which, according to organizers, was made possible with financial support from the Wayne Economic Development Council.