STEM Community Ambassadors
Bridging community partnerships

STEM Community Ambassadors supports local community adults in leading programs in their neighborhood by immersing the Ambassador in the world of connected learning while empowering them to provide a critical perspective during program development.
CURRENT UPDATE:
Adler’s Current Project:
One current project is a collaboration between Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy (IHSCA) and the Adler Planetarium, supported by generous funding from the Hive Chicago Fund for Connected Learning.
On Friday, January 15th, 2016, the youth astronomy club from the Pilsen/Little Village area will be empowered to facilitate activities and bring awareness about Chicago’s light pollution to the community at their high school, Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/save-our-stars-save-our-sky-tickets-19386800442
They are gathering data via light meters, learning how to build a Do It Yourself All Sky Camera, and learning how to utilize lighting properly while bringing professionals to speak about their experience with light pollution.
Project Goal:
Explore peer-to-peer learning through STEM projects
Empower youth to hack connected resources
This is an ongoing project and hope to bring other youth in the Chicago area to assist in helping how to better see our stars.
Iridescent’s Current Project:
Iridescent’s pilot is a collaboration with the Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA) at their McAuliffe Elementary site in Logan Square. Our STEM Community Ambassadors are two parent leaders at the school who are involved in LSNA’s parent mentor program.
Iridescent trained the Ambassadors to plan and facilitate family STEM workshops that focus on building engineering design challenges from Iridescent’s online platform, Curiosity Machine. In planning, the Ambassadors used Iridescent’s model for family science workshops and adapted it for their community, including translating the workshop content to Spanish.
At the first workshop in December, the Ambassadors led a group of parents and children through the engineering design process to build their own Air-Powered Spinning Machines. A second workshop with a different design challenge is planned for January.
Project Goal:
Introduce STEM family workshops to McAuliffe Elementary community
Empower Ambassadors to lead STEM workshops and lead in bringing new learning opportunities to McAuliffe Elementary
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