There is nothing we love more than getting engaged with our community.
On Wednesday, June 3rd, 2020, we hosted our first ever Virtual STEM Festival a.k.a STEM-A-Thon! The past few months have been wild and uncertain, but our mission to support youth in meaningful #STEM experiences has always remained the same. This is typically an event that we run in-person at our headquarters in Aurora, so at first we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to make it happen this year! We know we could all use a little fun and community connection during these unprecedented times, so our team put our heads together and decided to go live and launch the first-ever STEM Minds Virtual Festival!
Our Virtual Festival was unlike any other event we have ever done! Participants from all across the country explored the wonderful world of STEM with FREE virtual sessions guided by our expert staff throughout the day! Because the festival ran online, we were able to engage a wider range of students than would be possible with our in-person event. Session topics included 3D Design, Video Game Design, special guests, and more!
Our Schedule of the day was filled with excitement and a wide variety of STEM topics, below was the agenda of our day! We catered our programs to serve 3 age streams and built 3 different hubs to ease the process of joining the classes based on our attendee’s age categories.
This event was a huge success thanks to all our guest speakers from across different industries!
Sam Sproule & Julia Rivard from Squiggle Park/Dreamscape
The educational game company Squiggle Park led our participants through an interactive demonstration of their digital games where reading is gamified to engage any level of reader from preschool to grade 8.
Kim Cooper & The FIRST Robotics Canada Youth Council
Kim joined us for an interactive session where she inspired our students to get involved in local robotics events from FIRST Robotics Canada.
Anna from HELMLife
Anna from HELMLife joined us to help students looking to try something new while at home as she highlighted some activities that kids can do from the comfort of their living room.
Ali Hirji from the Durham College Cybersecurity & AI Hub
Ali from Durham College joined us and exposed our students to the world AI and Cybersecurity.
Kathleen Miller from Science Rendezvous
Katie from Science Rendezvous inspired our students to take science out of the lab and into their living room as she shared insights on how they can explore science at home.
Sarah Wagg from Durham College eSports
Since eSports is the fastest-growing form of entertainment in the world, Sarah from Durham College’s Esports team helped our students in exploring the educational routes and opportunities that lead to careers in gaming!
We are so incredibly grateful to all of our community members that we were able to host our first-ever Virtual STEM Festival! We were joined by over 200 participants worldwide as we explored the wonderful world of STEM! We would like to thank all our community partners, students, parents, staff, and our guest speakers for contributing to the success of this event.
Due to the support of all of you, our community, we have been fortunate enough to work with over 200 kids with fun, hands-on #STEM experiences in our virtual programming. We are so grateful to have such an amazing group of educators, parents, and individuals who believe in the importance of inspiring the next-generation of #FEARLESSLEADERS as much as we do! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all of your trust and support. We can’t wait to offer more and more Virtual Programs to all of you! Stay tuned for more announcements about other virtual events coming soon!