STEAM Workshops

Manifold of workshops in the line of STEAM approach (Science, technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics), in the frame of the program "Ciudadanía Digital" (Digital Citizenship) by Centro Cultural de España en México. Mexico City. 2019 - 2020.

Playing with lights and shadows (Five 4 hours sessions, Age: 9 - 17 years)

This workshop was planned as a way to train basic rational and planning psychic skills without the need of any disciplinary previous knowledge. The seed behind it is that in conventional school approaches there is no an organization of rational skills in the students, so all of them have to face disciplinary knowledge out from the given skills that have been given by family stimulation or previous school experiences, as not all of the children have had good stimulation, there are notorious difficulties to understand and to aprehend new knowledges in several children. The concept was to try to propose stimulation exercises that could train the fundational skills for organizaing processes and making plans, both part of the longic and rationalization cognitive processes. The strategy was to bring technical challenges, give some care and tools management guidelines, but not instructions to solve any of them, the objective with this approach was for the atenddees to struggle finding ways to solve the different challengence, but also to generate mental procedures to critically identify difficulties, problems and to pose questions looking for help. In the middle of the workshop, collaboration and frustration management was a key subject, because most of the children, mainly in school context are used for the teacher to solve the difficulties or to have a very well defined procedure to follow. The main challenges where: 1. Build a car with a plastic PET water bottle that actually rolls. 2. Building cardboard lamp hoods to project shapes in the wall. 3. Build a tin can lamp that actually works, with switch. 4. Build articulated lamps.

This workshop was given to groups several times in different community center and public schools in peripheral and low income areas with high levels of violence and vulnerability. Each of the experiences was different. besides the technical and cognitive challenges, the workshops were designed in a way that having fun, collaborate and customize was also a main part of it.