Pictured: STEAM in the Quad gets young kids excited about learning.
Area students in grades K-8 were welcomed at the Ohio State University Lima campus today for their annual STEAM on the Quad event.
For a while now, educators have realized the importance of teaching STEM: science technology, engineering, and math. Ohio State University along with 4H has recognized the need of integrating art with STEM, inviting younger students to explore the endless possibilities of creativity you can bring in a STEM career.
The Ohio State University Lima campus looked like a science playground Saturday morning. Kids could be seen playing in buckets of slime, checking out creepy crawlers with their magnifying glasses, and even programming drones to fly and robots to dance.
Mark Light, the leader for Ohio 4H STEM says,
“That’s ‘Mi Bot’ and Mi Bot has several different gears, actually six different gears, and so kids are actually learning to code Mi Bot. And again, behind that being a content creator, they’re learning how to make Mi Bot move.”
Light says it’s all about getting kids to be as excited about creating content as they are consuming it. The STEAM on the Quad event gives kids the chance to see what it’s like to work behind the scenes of their favorite gadgets, and could even lead to them finding a new passion in a STEM field which continues to have growing industries.
“A lot of industries and plants and manufacturing is becoming more robotic in nature and while people think that takes away jobs, there’s actually a desperate need for jobs in coding, for jobs in robotics, in manufacturing and so this is helping that younger generation be prepared for potential careers that way,” says Light.
Several community organizations came together for this event including Girls Scouts, The Lima Symphony, and even the Allen County Museum. Students at Ohio State played a big role in this as well, as they ran stations in their fields of interest and were able to share their passion with the next generation.
Leah Herner-Patnode, head of the STEAM program at OSU Lima says, “We have Ohio State students that are presenting a lot of these stations and some of them are future teachers, some of them are future scientists or future engineers, and they’re here to just share their passion and what they’re most excited about themselves with the children coming forward the future generation.”
If you missed out this time, STEAM on the Quad happens every year. Be on the lookout for updates from Ohio State on next year's event.
