STEAM
STEAM reflection ~
I’m interested in art and design since I was young. This STEAM program seems like a good opportunity to know more about design and art with a combination of some science, math and technology. This eventually led me to take this class.
I did not expect seeing Lego pieces lying down on the table on the first day of the class. That was not it yet. Later, we had to make airplanes with paper. I kept wondering why I was making airplanes out of paper in this class instead of learning about art, science, technology, math, and engineering. My first airplane did not fly long enough. Later, we iterate, iterate and iterate. We discussed about how paper can be folded in different ways so that it will change the speed of the airplane. Our final iterations were all so different from the very first airplane. It is fascinating how we all started off with similar conventional designs of the airplane and ended up with something that totally different from one another. That moment, I understood the purpose of this course. We weren’t just making simple airplanes. We were also integrating science (the aerodynamics effects), math, engineering, technology (the materials we used, the technique of folding the paper planes), and finally art (how to make it look elegant or beautiful or cool).
For the second week of the class, we were given the LED lights. We all came up with ideas with the uses of LED light. I initiated my idea by creating a device that would help doctors feel the pain that the patient is feeling. After many times of iteration, I came up with a device that would vibrate according to the patient’s pain. During this process, we had a critique and I got advices from other people. One of the best parts of this class is the critique part. People share their ideas and their opinions on how to improve our projects. It was also fun to look at what other people did and get inspired by their works.
Last week of the class was all about collaborating my idea with other people’s idea and create a new better product. Our group mainly focused on the “empathy” topic. It was fun to work with others! Our final product was the empathy bracelet, which I think it is really cool to have it in real life.
It is amazing how we all started with the paper airplane and end up with laser cut or 3D printed prototypes. This is also my first time learning how to use Processing, Adobe Illustrator, html, 123D Design. I will continue to work on those and also the design. I took AP 2D class in my school last year and this year I am going to take AP Art. I would also like to find out more about Arduino because it seems very interesting!
