About 350 students grades Kindergarten through 12th grade showcased a whopping record of 160 projects at Northville High School.
"My project is part of a class called EDD, which is Engineering Design and Development and we created a project that detects the early signs of carpal tunnel syndrome," explained Yui, 12th grader, NHS.
"Me and my teammate, we both wanted to do something for the STEAM Fair but we didn't really have an idea. We knew we wanted to do something technology related and so we came up with the idea of doing something with this robot. And we at first wanted to use a programming language to use but it was so precise we couldn't. So we used this color code and it has sensors at the bottom that color code it. So we had to go through a lot of trouble shooting but we finally got here," said Audrey, 5th grader, Amerman Elementary.
Many of the students say their project was inspired by what they learned in STEAM class.
"We're just winding down on our 2nd year with the elementary STEAM program implementation and looking forward to next year, our 3rd year being full-year at every elementary school. And it's really cool to see some of the projects that are here today because the engineering design process, design thinking types of projects that we do in class are coming out in the projects that are here on display with the kids from their own ideas and inspiration. So it's really cool to see some of that, those ideas and thought processes transfer over to the projects that are here," said Kim Chenoweth, Elementary STEAM Teacher, NPS.
And the inspiration is going beyond the classroom.
"I want to go into a career for STEAM because as a kid I've always loved building and when I grow up I've also grown interest and I love STEAM class because it just shows all the things you can do in STEAM because there's so many fields of it," said Ridhi, 5th grader, Amerman.
Yui went on to say, "I've been in the engineering track since middle school and I've really really enjoyed it. A lot of girls tend to fall out of the program as they get older but I really hope that with these younger generations they'll be able to keep going and get to the senior capstone class."
It's full steam ahead for our aspiring engineers.