STEAM: Innovation & Design
I helped build a Maker Space at the Shanghai American School that sat at the intersection, both literally and figuratively, of our Innovation Space as well as our Science and Art departments. A key focus of my Innovation & Design class was to leverage this space, pushing students to explore new territory where art and technology meet. Using fabrication tools, laser cutters, microcontrollers, and engineering principles, students created dynamic, interactive sculptures and more.
Poem
in a Box
The Poem in a Box project was developed as an interdisciplinary project for Shanghai American School's Innovation Institute that incorporated learning from a poetry unit from their english class and electromechanical engineering from a STEAM unit in our art class. Based on their own original poems, student focused on a
moment of change to create an interactive sculpture. The only requirements were that the students use a simple tabbed box template and integrate an Arduino with a proximity sensor that can respond to someone approaching the box with a combination of light and/or movement. The box was designed to have a compartment to serve as a 'stage' for the student work as well as hidden compartment for an Arduino. However, in this video you can see how the students hacked, redesigned, broke, added, or redefined the limits of the box to best express their ideas.
Set Design for
Raisin in the Sun
This project exemplifies how students use STEAM learning to approach their Innovation work. In this project, our Innovation Students designed a set for Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun. Students selected a scene in the play and examined how they could express aspects of the themes through the set design. To fully explore these themes, they researched Black artists who dealt with similar themes in their work and imagined what sets designed by these artists might have looked like. Students used maker space tools to fabricate the sets and include movement and lighting as part of their design. Finally, they reflected on their research and process in video podcasts, such as this one. More of their responses can be found here.