Students from Brooks Composite High School examine tiny crustaceans under the microscope while doing an experiment on lethal doses. The students were taking part in Medicine Hat College's inaugural STEM for a Day experiences.--NEWS PHOTO SAMANTHA JOHNSON
reporter@medicinehatnews.com
Students from local and regional high schools are spending a day this week at Medicine Hat College to immerse themselves in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). On May 19, there will be an open day for the community from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Steve Letkeman, instructor in Information Technology at MHC, explained, “We are giving a taste of a programming environment. We thought to do something fun with them where they are writing a bit of code to control a drone.”
Students were able to write a command so the drone would take off or land. Alternatively, it could crash, as it did when the News was in the classroom.
“That’s perfectly normal,” stated Letkeman. “It’s a durable drone that’s meant for use in education and it’s safe to be flying around inside the classroom. It gives the students a visual feedback as to whether or not they wrote their code correctly.”
Adon Mehare and Michaela Pelisco, Grade 10 students from Brooks Composite High School, were taking part in the IT session.
“I think it’s a good opportunity for us to learn. It’s fun to see how different things work with technology,” said Mehare.
“I think it is very interesting because you get to see how professional people code and how drones operate,” added Pelisco.
At the Computer Aided Drafting and Design lab the students were either using Revit, a 3D architecture modelling software for designing houses and buildings, or Inventor, a mechanical engineering design software.
Owen Stodalka, a Grade 12 student at Monsignor McCoy High School, was working through a tutorial on how to use Inventor. He was mostly interested in the session on power engineering, which is what he plans to take upon graduating.
In the science lab, students were looking at small crustaceans under the microscope and doing an experiment on lethal doses in relation to causing significant danger to human health or the environment.
Cory Kitchen, a Grade 10 student at Brooks Composite, said, “It’s very interesting to watch nature, especially up close. When it comes down to tiny stuff it’s quite cool.” Science is Kitchen’s second favourite subject and he referred to himself as more of a math guy. He’s already pondering what he’d like to do for post-secondary education and MHC is one of the colleges he is looking at.
Sumaya Mohamoud, also from Brooks Composite, said, “So far it’s interesting. There are lots of nice people here. We are looking into the microscope; we killed some little things and I don’t even know if they were alive.”
