Watch a video about our Parkland Program on MCPS NewCenter: in English and Spanish.
This past school year, KID Museum has been working with Parkland Magnet Middle School to bring STEM education to more diverse populations and underserved children through the inaugural Invention Studio. The students involved are from the school’s Parkland Scholars program, which is designed to develop interest and improve academic performance in STEM for African-American and Latino children, and is the only such program currently available to middle schoolers in Montgomery County Public Schools. Over the course of several visits to the museum, the students each created their own invention, including robots with ultrasonic navigation, 3D printed housed with their own lighting grids, digitally composed music, and motorized flying machines.
The program came to completion today with a celebration at KID Museum, where the students were able to present their inventions and share their stories about the experience. They talked to an audience of friends, parents and community members about the goals of their inventions and the techniques and processes they used to achieve them. The instructors from KID Museum who worked closely with the students gave demonstrations of the different projects along side the students. After the presentations, the students and their audience took some time browsing one another’s projects and enjoying some refreshments courtesy of Parkland’s Principal.
