I had a full week preparing for the STEM Grant Recipients' Luncheon. There were handouts to locate, to understand, and then to amend (in terms of contact names and dates). The slide show needed to be updated and changed according to some suggestions that Yukiko had made to me. One was that she didn't think the assessment piece was working for us, and so I had a lot of thinking and contacting others to do in order to find out what would be appropriate as far as assessment. I wanted to give the Power Point a bit more 'history' of where our common goals came from and put a bit more focus on our common goals. I wanted to emphasize creating more scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians through these projects. I began with researching the STEM initiative. I started making Power Point slides, trying to set the stage and tell the story. But this quickly became too wordy and boring. I had a talk with myself about putting all of Nannette into this, tired or not, and so I gave it all I had. Right up until 11:30 p.m. on November 3rd. It isn't perfect, but it gave the touch of creativity and meaning that I wanted it to have. I will go back at some point, I hope, and work with the audio levels, but here is the movie I created that I inserted into the Power Point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yhygCqG3Yc
(P.S. These photos came from my classroom and I pointed out before showing it that there were many parent volunteers, Cornell Professors and Rockwell Engineers in the photos. Some of the photos are also from our trip to Washington D.C. for the U.S.A. Science Expo).
I had a good turnout for the luncheon, and the recipients were grateful and delightful. I am so very lucky to have Jim Thornton behind this project. He is amazing. He is organized, helpful, patient, and experienced. It does my heart good to see someone so good at his job. He was an administrator, and I can tell the schools he worked for must have been in very good hands.
My favorite part of the luncheon were the gals from Hiawatha. They were so excited about having gone to Space Camp. I was pleased that one of them was African American, because we want to increase minority interest in science, and I can tell that this dynamic duo will do a great job of that with their program. I can't wait to see their flight activities!
