About

At St. Philomena School, students K-8 have an hour a week in our STEM Lab/Makerspace (PreK students have 20 minutes). All students have access to Google Apps for Education and start learning how to use them in Kindergarten.

Students spend a semester in our LEGO Robotics program.

• Kindergarten students focus on working with a partner to complete different building tasks.
• Grades 1-4 focus on building and programing models using simple machines with a LEGO WeDo set.
• Grades 5-7 focus on building and programming using the LEGO NXT Mindstorms. During this time students are learning more advanced programming utilizing sensors, how to calculate for an exact distance, and how to use the sensors to obtain information about the outside world (i.e. air temperature and measurements of different objects).
• 8th Grade students use the LEGO EV3 Mindstorms kit. They spend a quarter exploring the behaviors of the robot and the new programming platform. The next quarter students collaborate with partners to program their robots to complete a series of tasks.

Students spend a semester in our Makerspace program.

• Students utilize the Engineering Design Process when creating their projects.
• Students learn how to create 3D Designs using Tinkercad and Leopoly (an application in our Virtual/Augmented Reality ZSpace Lab).
• Students begin video production using stop motion animation, greenscreen, iPad apps, and WeVideo web-based software.
• Students learn how to create simple drawings and designs using JavaScript.
• Students learn how to program using the Dash-and-Dot and Sphero robots.