DoD STEM
Beyond the Horizon
Embedded Files
A Year in STEM
A Year in STEM
Welcome to my DoD STEM Ambassador website. This website serves as a repository of all major STEM initiatives, projects and programs administered during SY 2022/2023.
This school year was an exceptional year for STEM involvement thanks to the support of the DoD STEM Ambassador program. Through their generosity and extensive network of STEM resources, I was able to implement a number of new initiatives otherwise not possible.
Please be sure to check out all of the "Ambassador Insights" links to get the backstory for each article. Also, please check out the "Resources" links as I have provided supportive teacher material should that be of interest for you.
Happy reading...
July
July
STEM Olympics 2024.pdfAFCEA STEM Olympics
AFCEA STEM Olympics
The AFCEA STEM Olympics is currently awaiting final approval for SY 2023/2024 and projected to replace the current SkillsUSA Europe Championships. The new program will provide students throughout Europe East an opportunity to win cash scholarships in the areas of Atmospheric Studies (STEM Challenge), Engineering, Cybersecurity and Programming.
In addition to recognizing top students for their talents, the new STEM Olympics program will also recognize schools and teachers for their part in supporting STEM. Teachers having the highest participation in each of the four contests will receive STEM grants for their classrooms.
Schools having the highest participation will win the AFCEA STEM Spirit Award, while the school having the most points throughout the competition will receive the AFCEA STEM Excellence Award.
The new AFCEA STEM Olympics is open to all Europe East high school students. Teachers are eligible to include the challenges into their curriculum if desired. Final submissions for all contests will be 30 April.
JUNE
JUNE
Mandalas by Scratch
Mandalas by Scratch
The "Mandalas by Scratch" workshop was a collaborative effort between Deutsche Telekom and myself to help expose and excite females about the world of coding. Freshman from Kaiserslautern High School and 8th graders from Kaiserslautern Middle School received an experience they will never forget thanks to this unique introduction to coding.
Students were introduced to Scratch programming to help support a business process. Teams of four students were tasked to create a user interface that would enable customers to design mandalas which would be applied to ceramic tiles for customer home evaluation.
This realistic scenario inspired the teams to produce the most vibrant and interesting selection of mandalas, all of which were programmed via Scratch. Students would finalize their project by constructing a virtual console to which a touch pad would serve as the customer interface.
Students worked in teams, under both time and program constraints, as they had a friendly competition to see which team could produce the most interesting and effective product.
Each team received value-added, constructive criticism from the Telekom professionals further enhancing their overall understanding of project management best practices and adherence to project constraints.
Facilities Warning System Prototype.pdfIntegrity Monitoring System (IMS)
Integrity Monitoring System (IMS)
Real world relevancy was introduced to coding students via the IMS (Integrity Monitoring System) project. 2022/2023 was a strange year at KHS, for some reason select members our student body elected to wreak havoc upon our bathrooms to the point of extreme vandalism. As a result, only one male and one female bathroom were open for the whole school. This was quite frustrating for both students and staff. As such, I decided to use this real-world problem for my end of year Coding project.
Students were tasked to produce a Proof-of-Concept prototype which could notify administration via Bluetooth notification that possible vandalism is occurring within a particular bathroom. Students worked in teams of four to address the issue. Students had freedom of choice regarding:
1. Bathroom (one of the possible 14 bathrooms)
2. Sensor (20 various sensors)
3. Coding Preference (no constraints on final code)
4. Bathroom physical mock-up design (bathroom scale of 1:12)
Upon completion of the project, students produced a working prototype to which teams presented to the student body during Seminar. Students showcased their work (prototype and tri-fold display) as they answered inquisitive questions from their peers and teachers.
May
May
DoD STEM Challenge
DoD STEM Challenge
The DoD STEM Challenge is the most exciting, challenging and comprehensive STEM competition held by AFCEA Chapter 158. High school students throughout Europe East had a unique opportunity to, not only win scholarships ($1,600), but to enhance their understanding of the atmosphere through this challenging integrative STEM competition.
This particular contest challenges students to design, engineer and implement a high-altitude atmospheric study. Students working in teams of 3 or 4 identify a particular hypothesis or research question they plan to investigate. Each team would research, design and engineering an experiment which would be flown into near space via high-altitude balloon.
Teams would provide a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) providing a detailed explanation of their experiment design so that the contracted vendor could accurately reproduce the experiment for HAB flight. Upon completion of the flight, data from the flight computer, Databot and team-specific experimental data would be returned to each team for data analysis. Students would then produce a final STEM report containing an in-depth analysis of their experiment.
Each team submitted a comprehensive website containing all aspects of the experience to include project management details, media and blog. Please take a look at our top two submissions below.
April
April
SLP.pdf.pdfSTEM+Lender+Program+Project+Presentation.pdfSTEM Lender Program
STEM Lender Program
Students enrolled in my Digital Media class became an integral part of the new STEM Lender Program. The STEM Lender Program is a new STEM initiative approved by our local AFCEA chapter to which I am the VP of Education. The concept is quite simple – procure STEM equipment for loan to district teachers. Our chapter decided to procure the following bundles: laptops with hotspot, drones, 3-D printers and Databots.
The introduction of this new program presented a very interesting opportunity for my Digital Imaging students. I created a project such that the top student team submissions would be used as the marketing materials for the new program. Students worked in teams of two to develop the program’s new logo, a brochure and a poster. Students had complete control over the direction and design of the brochure.
The SLP project enabled students to utilize their creativity toward a real-world project to which their work would be seen by many. All of the student submissions were reviewed by other students. The top five submissions were then provided to the AFCEA executive committee for review, feedback and rating. The top submission for each of the three deliverables were identified.
March
March
SkillsUSA Awards Slide 2023.pptxSkillsUSA Europe Awards Ceremony w/ Drone Contest and STEM Bowl
SkillsUSA Europe Awards Ceremony w/ Drone Contest and STEM Bowl
The 6th Annual SkillsUSA European Championships culminated with a live awards ceremony, drone competition and STEM Bowl. This was the first time in three years that we were able to return to a live awards ceremony. The event took place at the Innovation Lab on Ramstein Air Base.
Middle school and high school students were invited to participate in the first ever SkillsUSA Europe Drone Challenge. The Drone Challenge had student teams compete against time as they flew their drones through a challenging course (manually and autonomously). At the completion of the Drone Challenge, students then competed once again in an "All or Nothing" STEM Challenge.
Following the individual challenges, AFCEA president, Col James Austin would then kick off the awards ceremony with some encouraging words of wisdom for those supporting STEM. Space Guardian Maj Rachel Kolesnikovlindsey (Keynote Speaker) would then capture everyone's attention as she talked about her incredible space career and need to follow your dreams, no matter what.
AFN was on hand to capture the essence of the Drone Challenge.
AFN Captures Essence of Drone Competition
AFN Captures Essence of Drone Competition
AFN Kaiserslautern was on-site to capture the first-ever SkillsUSA Europe Drone competition. The competition was not an official SkillsUSA competition, but a special STEM event courtesy of the DoD STEM and AFCEA Chapter 158.
Teams of four competed head-to-head as they maneuvered their drones within challenging course requiring the drone to pass through a number of gates and perform particular move sequences.
Following the manual mode via mobile phone app, students were challenge to code their drones for the same course they had previously completed manually. Teams with the lowest combined course times (Autonomous and Manual) received cash prizes.
Watch AFN's official Trailer of the event below.
February
February
Debate Abbreviated (1).mp4SkillsUSA STEM Debate with Rubric.pdfSTEM Debate (Artificial Intelligence)
STEM Debate (Artificial Intelligence)
The STEM Debate was introduced as a new contest into the 2023 SkillsUSA Europe Championships. This new contest would challenge students to perform a deep dive into the area of Artificial Intelligence. Teams of two would compete in a double elimination tournament.
Prior to the tournament, each team would research seven AI specific prompts and produce both the Pro and Con argument via T-Charts. The T-Charts were submitted prior to the contest and were the only sources of material used during the competition. The tournament was held virtually via Zoom breakout rooms. A large team of judges were involved in the competition, many of whom were recruited from the base legal center.
Teams learned about a specific subtopic 10 minutes prior to competition. Following a virtual coin flip, the 2-minute initial arguments would be presented, followed by cross-examination and rebuttal.
This was one of the most interesting, yet complicated STEM events I have ever been part of. It was also one of the most stimulating and impressive demonstration of STEM discourse and critical thinking.
Engineeing Challenge.pdfTechnical Report Max Furqueron and Kennedy Call.docx (1).pdfEngineering Design Contest
Engineering Design Contest
The 2023 SkillsUSA Engineering Contest challenged to design an autonomous surface vessel (ASV) system, which could be used to remove solid pollution from an active shipping lane before it enters the world’s oceans. They were tasked to provide a theory of operation and demonstrate the full engineering design process based on the constraints and limitations of the challenge. Students would produce a virtual and/or physical prototype.
The Engineering Contest has been a long standing and much anticipated SkillsUSA European event. We have been using the same rubric for the past three years with great success. This year, in addition to the required document submission, students also provided a video presentation of their final prototype.
Network Challenge.pdf
Cybersecurity Contest
Cybersecurity Contest
The SkillsUSA Cybersecurity contest was a HUGE success. Schools having a Cyberpatriot program were the targeted audience for this contest. Six teams had a very unique opportunity to experience "Cyberpatriot" within a Capture-the-Flag environment. This was all thanks to our partners from Virginia Tech who run the Virginia Cyber Range. This partnership was orchestrated through Dr. Melissa Dark of Teach Cyber.
Students worked within a virtual environment as they hardened both Linux and Windows machines (50% of total score). The remaining points for the contest would be divided amongst a Networking Challenge (held on a separate day and developed by regional network engineering), and an "a la carte" challenge of various cyber topics.
Students throughout the contest consistently agreed that this experience superseded their expectations and that they liked it better than Cyberpatriot, which of course was very nice to hear.
1677711363.273666_game_32d07720-1cf9-4449-b883-9d93775297f6.mp4Programming Contest
Programming Contest
The 2023 SkillsUSA programming challenge was extra special this year. Our contest coordinator, Mr. Nathaniel Schaaf from Amazon Web Services produced a phenomenal contest. Students were tasked to program a snake which would compete against other snakes and eat them, as well as all of the pellets. Students had two weeks to program their "Snek". They could also see their results in real time against the other Sneks from competitors. It was the best programming challenge to date.
September - January
September - January
Building STEM Capacity
Building STEM Capacity
The months of September through January were spent building STEM Capacity through new or enhanced programs. This was a busy time as new products, new partners, and new ideas were flourishing. Below are some of the highlights during this period:
Worked with Ms. Barbara Koscak (Starbase) and both base and district leadership to establish a new Starbase 2.0 program on Ramstein Air Base. Unfortunately, our request was denied due to our overseas status
TSA (Technology Student Association)
Established a new Kaiserslautern High School TSA chapter. Having access to TSA STEM resources was invaluable for the upcoming new SkillsUSA contests. Additionally, now our students can compete at the TSA state events should they choose so.
SkillsUSA Europe (NY State Area VII)
Worked feverishly to establish, coordinate, develop and administer 10 SkillsUSA contests. Spent a considerable amount of time meeting with contest coordinators, Europe East teachers and students to drive excitement and involvement.
Continued to push STEM involvement through the Community Partnership Program
POC for teacher STEM grants and community outreach
Leveraged community mentorship for SkillsUSA
Proposed two new STEM initiatives (STEM Lender Program and AFCEA STEM Olympics)
August
August
NISE Certified
NISE Certified
August was a very busy month considering I was still on my summer break. I had started a new M.Ed (STEM Education) with American College of Education in May and needed to try and keep pace over the summer so I elected to complete the Research Methods course during August.
Also in August, I was able to finalize my NISE (National Institute for STEM Education) certification requirement. This was a VERY intense process which required a significant amount of hours to complete. The certification is a requirement for the ACE STEM program.
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