STEM Grant Spotlight: IEEE STEM Arduino Workshop ‘Pinch Your Spark’

Leaders and advocates of STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education are making efforts to take learning beyond just the academics offered in the classroom. Through TryEngineering, IEEE Volunteers are able to make STEM outreach projects a reality that reach school-aged children around the world. TryEngineering empowers educators and supports volunteers by providing STEM resources including peer-reviewed lesson plans at no cost. In 2022, TryEngineering supported IEEE Volunteers in hosting 621 worldwide events that reached over 60,000 students and 12,000 pre-university educators. The IEEE Pre-University STEM Grant Program offers the opportunity for financial support to start, sustain, or scale selected STEM outreach projects in local communities. In 2022, 30 programs were selected as STEM grant recipients. One of the selected programs was IEEE STEM Arduino Workshop ‘Pinch Your Spark.’ This program was conducted by the IEEE Student Branch of Vimal Jyothi Engineering College (Kerala, R10) with the goal of developing skills like problem solving, cooperation, creativity, communication while developing a deep understanding of Arduino and other selected STEM content.

The one-day workshop took place in July, 2022 and included 42 school-aged students, three pre-university educators, and three parents. The focus was on the topic of Arduino-an open-source prototyping platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. The event kicked-off with a talk by Professor Laly James HOD of Electrical and Electronics department, a senior IEEE member. The morning session introduced electronics and the familiarization of related components. Students were introduced to the concepts of Arduino and were prepped for the competition that followed later in the day. In the afternoon session, students dove deep into Arduino software through component kits that were provided. These kids included the Arduino UNO, driver board, ultrasonic sensor, potentiometer, jumper wires, LED’s, bread board, and batteries. After the students completed assembly of the kits, the competition commenced. It was based on the lesson instructions from the earlier sessions, which focused on turning on three LED’s one by one using the Arduino software. The event was concluded by announcing the winners who received cash prizes. All participants all received a certificate of participation.

The leaders of the event concluded that there was much interest and many positive outcomes. The morning learning session was interactive, and the speaker was well experienced in this field, addressing many of the students’ doubts and concerns. The hands-on experience with the kits helped the students to get a clear understanding of Arduino, which aided the students in improving their technical skills and capabilities . All of the participants performed very well and demonstrated interest in this field . Additionally, cash prizes for the top three groups seemed to drive the desire to compete.

IEEE STEM Arduino Workshop ‘Pinch Your Spark’ was a recipient of the 2022 IEEE Pre-University STEM Grant Program. IEEE TryEngineering and the IEEE Foundation have partnered to raise donations in support of the IEEE STEM Grant Program. If you would like to contribute, please make a donation via our IEEE TryEngineering Fund donation Page.