MVHS 1st Annual STEM Night Re-Cap

Moreno Valley High School hosted it’s first ever STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) Night last week. It was an exciting evening for Moreno Valley families and students. If you were in attendance, thank you so much for joining us! If you missed the event, here is a re-cap of the evening.

The first station at STEM night was our Green Screen station. Participants chose one of 12 backgrounds and then MVHS teacher, Amelia Smith would take a live photo of the participant against our green screen so that she could insert them into their chosen background. See some fun examples below.

In the gathering hall, MVHS Computer Science Principles students ran 7 more STEM stations. Our high school students demonstrated their station’s technology, guided attendees in projects and gave out challenge badges for each completed activity. Station activities included:

• Learning block code with Code.org.

• Programming micro:bit boards with code.

• Controlling computer keyboards with MakeyMakey and using Playdough to play the piano or draw with an Etch A Sketch app.

• Creating working catapults or mechanical bats with Strawbees.

• Designing cars from scrap cardboard and makedo connectors.

• Building self-driving cars or art bots with littleBits.

• Navigating spehro robots around an obstacle course using an app that requires code.

In addition there were 4 more self-directed stations:

• 3D printing - Our Computer Science teacher Mel Ponce de Leon, set up our printer so that attendees could witness printing in action. She also worked for months to create a variety of 3D printed objects which were displayed on a table next to the printer.

• Demonstration of our newly acquired telescope, generously donated by Gary Zientara.

• Stage-in-the-Box which is our new theater & lighting manipulative that allows the theater department to experiment with different stage set-ups and lighting themes.

• For the littles, a coloring station where children could color STEM themed sheets.

Everyone who attended went home with an 8x10 green screen photo and any badges they earned along the way. Students who demonstrated badges for 7 stations were allowed to pick an item of their choosing from our 3D printed station to take home.

Thank you to everyone who pitched in to make this evening possible. Special thanks go out to our MVHS students who manned the stations, MVHS staff who helped monitor the evening and assist students, parent volunteers who brought food so no one would go hungry and our MVHS Director for making this evening possible.

Hope to see you again next year!