Makers and creators from the Darlington Community welcomed guests to campus on Monday for Maker Day, a special technology exhibition hosted in collaboration with Geek Week Rome.
Students in the ELA-8 and Upper School divisions shared how STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) is integrated daily into the classroom through a variety of fun games, supplemental instruction, and opportunities to create projects from the ground up.
“We're here to teach more kids that technology is there for your help and your usage, and to help make that spectrum easier for them—and more broad,” said six-grade Darlington student Sam Tullis, who gravitates toward robotics and 3-D printing. “It’s a new evolution that is coming—technology is getting bigger, better and more advanced, and kids need to know how to use it."
The showcase featured ELA-8 student presenters at different stations demonstrating a variety of helpful tools, apps and other technology. Guests watched coloring sheets come to life with Quiver, 3-D designs emerge using Tinkercad, an interactive game of PlayDoh Pac-Man with MaKey MaKey, a constructed plastic alligator move electronically with LEGO WeDo, a 3Doodler pen create three-dimensional "drawings," and other resources that helped put the art in STEAM. Upper School students and faculty gave tours of Darlington's Makerspace, sharing different projects and robotics competitions they were taking on during the 2015-16 school year.
Geek Week Rome, put on annually by the Greater Rome Chamber of Commerce's Technology SquareTable committee, officially kicked off last Saturday with the Rome & Floyd County Cardboard Challenge.
Geek Week Rome is the brainchild of Charles Howell, former Floyd Medical Center I.T. director, who conceived the concept five years ago as a fun and innovative way to recognize and celebrate the contributions of his team members.
“Geek Week is a loose collaboration of fun technology events and community-driven projects," said Howell. "It has taken a life of its own and is gaining momentum.”
Howell decided to involve the Chamber of Commerce three years ago to grow the event and its impact.
“The Chamber was the perfect match,” said Howell. “There were many shared goals—to build a community rich in technology and innovation while attracting interested younger individuals. It is great exposure to how the world works today.”
Many Darlington students first come in contact with elementary technology essentials in ELA-8, first learning drag-and-drop coding, then moving on to JavaScript, and later learning to write their own code through different games, getting them familiar with the idea of doing their own programming. By the time these students reach the Upper School, many of them are set up and ready to program their own games.
In an individual approach that meets Darlington students where they are in the classroom, a dedicated technology integration team encourages them to look introspectively at society, searching out the needs of the community and how technology might offer help. From there, they are challenged to brainstorm different solutions for the problems and ways to bring those solutions to life.
“STEAM and maker culture have many real world applications. There is a lot of trial and error in figuring out how to make something work,” said Mano Hernandez, network administrator in Darlington’s IT Office and member of the Technology SquareTable. “It pulls in different disciplines that you might not get in a traditional class.”
The ultimate goal for the technology integration team at Darlington is to completely merge the fundamentals of STEAM concepts with what is learned each day in the classroom. Once students are hooked and interested, they will be more apt to take technology-focused courses as they approach the middle grades and continue into the Upper School.
"It has been really neat to have all of this at Darlington, as our [coordinators] mentor us and guide us—as they help us to make,” added Tullis.
The celebration of Geek Week continues in Rome on Thursday with an egg drop competition at Barron Stadium and two Friday events, a picnic at Ridge Ferry Park and a "hackathon" at the Berry College HackBerry Lab.
Click here for more information on Geek Week Rome.
Junior Cooper Brock stands still on a revolving platform while a 3-D digital rendering is created of his body.
STEAM— Science, technology, engineering, art & mathematics
Geek Week Rome founder Charles Howell (left), Angela Devine of the Greater Rome Chamber of Commerce, and junior Ash Herndon examine a prosthetic hand that was created in Darlington's Makerspace.
Sixth-grader Sia Patel creates a design with a 3Doodler pen as second-grader Shyann Wardlaw looks on.
