Brisbane’s Bulimba State School has led the charge in fostering creative and analytical thought within their students with their recent STEAM Expo, which delivered engaging opportunities for learning and excitement in activities relevant to STEAM.
Allowing students, parents and local dignitaries from the Bulimba community to participate in interactive, educational and enormously fun hands-on STEAM workshops, the Expo gave participants the chance to get hands-on and work collaboratively within teams.
Lee Brentzell, Chair of Bulimba State School's P&C STEAM Sub Committee and organiser of the Expo workshops, felt that the Expo offered immense value in engaging students and piquing curiosity towards STEAM field.
“It was great to see all the children engaged, excited and enthusiastic about learning on a Sunday, and showing their parents the cool things they learnt after classes formally finished and we managed to shuffle them out the door” Mrs Brentzell said.
In total, the Expo saw over 240 students take part in fun, interactive workshops provided by local vendors, giving the opportunity to experiment and enjoy activities involving coding, rockets, interactive toys and games, slime and snow, engineering earthquakes, chain reactions and robolympics.
The range of activities brought delight and challenge to attendees in equal amount; one workshop presenter, Nathan Beveridge, provided student groups with the opportunity to use Spheros, an innovative and fun educational toy which helps develop computer and coding skills as part of the toy’s operation. The Spheros received a rapturous reception from the participating students, with many students expressing a keen interest in purchasing their own to play and experiment with.
In addition to the many workshops available as part of the expo, there was also a great range of free STEAM-related activities, vendor stalls, presentations and more.
Ken Gillard, Deputy President of Engineers Australia, attended the event, and felt that the Expo was an important step in the right direction, helping to groom future engineers for success.
“The Bulimba State School’s STEAM Expo was a huge success and well organised. The program is certainly opening options for the primary school students in STEM” Mr Gillard said.
Moving forward, Bulimba State School’s P&C STEAM Sub Committee aims to continue their work with local vendors to deliver more STEAM-related activities and classes to students.