Coming from place where science and technology were largely disregarded in my early school education, I felt STEM education through outreach is essential to how students get up to date to forefront technologies. In addition, as the world’s technology constantly evolves, schools’ rigid curriculum often do not provide students the necessary resources to explore new opportunities in STEM. I believe outreach will always be worthwhile for connecting students and helping them stay in touch with current innovations. This is why I joined this amazing group of UW students to help promote STEM outreach during my spring break in 2018. 

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In the past, I had the experience of conducting STEM outreach with my high school robotics team. I always enjoyed educating children about STEM. Before, it was demonstrating what STEM can do through teaching children about the robots we built. For Neah Bay, it was about empowering students to create something for themselves using digital storytelling and coding. The process of researching and designing curriculum, was in a way going through the user-centered design process. We connected with the indigenous group of students living at the edge of the continent, remote from the typical technology-powered cities. We were prompted to think about how to effectively teach students and get them excited about STEM. Ten weeks during winter quarter, we conducted research on educating middle and high school students and designed specific day to day curriculum for teaching during spring break. Over the course of a week, the Neah Bay students, not only do they learned the fundamentals of programming, but also discovered more STEM related opportunities. Many indicated continuing interest in STEM as they hope to pursue a career in STEM in the future. Our efforts, received recognition from both Neah Bay and UW faculty, helped promote STEM knowledge among underrepresented groups of students and make a difference in the community. <3

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Read more about this program here (see us in the UW news!).

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