2026 STEAM TEAMS Notes
Below are notes of STEAM TEAMS Learning Lab meetings held during 2026.
Related STEAM-TEAMS Activities:
2026 IEEE STEM Summit: Our Showcase Booth
The IEEE Pikes Peak Section is building an AI-assisted STEAM/STEM outreach ecosystem that brings together Life Members, Young Professionals, students, educators, parents, industry partners, and the broader community.
Our experimental work includes IEEE STEM grants, multimedia learning booths, hands-on circuit activities, leadership mini-sites, and mentorship pathways. These efforts are now coming together into a scalable STEAM-TEAMS model.
The goal is to transform curiosity into competence, competence into leadership, and leadership into service for the benefit of future generations.
To explore the booth, click on the purple checkbox to view the multimedia content. This interactive hotspot is an example of how multimedia resources can be organized for visitors. To view the booth in full-screen mode, click the icon in the upper-right corner.
You can also visit our mini-websites at: Snap Circuits | PhET Demos | PhET Demos – Math | PhET Demos Photonics
The 2025 IEEE STEM Summit Virtual Booth was emulated. Of the 2000+ participants, 33 emails were provided from 65 visitors yielding a 50% conversion rate. The booth can be found here: 2025 IEEE STEM Summit Booth.
Here is a sample YouTube playlist of 3d animation videos: Storytelling Animation on STEM/STEAM Topics – YouTube
These monthly meetings also help prepare for the Cool Science Festival. Their Facebook page of can be found at: (20+) Colorado Springs Cool Science Festival | Facebook and video reels.
To enlarge any flipbooks, please see image below.
Examples: Fun with Play Doh Circuits with AI-Assisted Drawings
Attended Region 5 Conference, 27-29 Mar 2026. Dr Santiago led and coordinated the STEM and Community Outreach Workshop. Briefed Dr Abigail Theron on the results of the workshop. Dr Theron briefed the Region 5 delegates on the committee results.
2026 Cool Science Carnival Day and Festival: IEEE Pikes Peak Section Hands-On STEM Outreach
Signup Form for Parents and Kids
This is for interested parents who would like to attend the follow-up sessions at the 21C Library. These sessions are held on 5 Oct and 12 Oct during Cool Science Festival (3-18 Oct 2026). IEEE members interested in volunteering should use the volunteer signup page.
5 Oct 2026 (Mon) or 12 Oct 2026 (Mon), 5 pm-7pm
The following dates are a continuation of Snap Circuits and PhET Simulations: plus Magnets, Motors, Microcontrollers, and Monster Magic Hands-on demos given on Carnival Day, 3 Oct 2026 involving electromagnets, levitating pencils, AI-robotics, and more! Please register for this event for either 5 Oct 2026 (Mon) or 12 Oct 2026 (Mon). The presentations are the same for both dates, so you need to only select one date that is convenient for you. These meetings will be held at the ENT Conference Room at 21st Century Library, 1175 Chapel Hills Drive, 5 pm - 7 pm. We can only accommodate a total of 20 parents and kids.
Click on the purple checkbox to see the multimedia content. This serves as an example of an interactive hotspot. You can enlarge to full screen by clicking on the upper rightmost icon.
Examples: Fun with Play Doh Circuits with AI-Assisted Drawings
2026 Cool Science Carnival Day and Festival: IEEE Pikes Peak Section Hands-On STEM Outreach
Signup Form for Parents and Kids
This is for interested parents who would like to attend the follow-up sessions at the 21C Library. These sessions are held on 5 Oct and 12 Oct during Cool Science Festival (3-18 Oct 2026). IEEE members interested in volunteering should use the volunteer signup page.
5 Oct 2026 (Mon) or 12 Oct 2026 (Mon), 5 pm-7pm
The following dates are a continuation of Snap Circuits and PhET Simulations: plus Magnets, Motors, Microcontrollers, and Monster Magic Hands-on demos given on Carnival Day, 3 Oct 2026 involving electromagnets, levitating pencils, AI-robotics, and more! Please register for this event for either 5 Oct 2026 (Mon) or 12 Oct 2026 (Mon). The presentations are the same for both dates, so you need to only select one date that is convenient for you. These meetings will be held at the ENT Conference Room at 21st Century Library, 1175 Chapel Hills Drive, 5 pm - 7 pm. We can only accommodate a total of 20 parents and kids.
Click on the purple checkbox to see the multimedia content. This serves as an example of an interactive hotspot. You can enlarge to full screen by clicking on the upper rightmost icon.
The IEEE Pikes Peak Section support the University of Boulder STEM event, entitled, Build Something Cool, for younger students. Dr Santiago’s session is entitled, “Magnets, Motors and Monster Magic”. Here is a link to the description of their comprehensive workshop: Workshop Descriptions | BSC2026 | University of Colorado Boulder.
Build Something Cool at CU Boulder on Saturday, October 10, 2026 : vTools Events | vTools IEEE
Family Registration: Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management
A screenshot is give below as well for your convenience.
Here are examples of a waiver: BSC Waiver | STEAM-TEAMS waiver (if needed when there is soldering or high-voltage equipment use by parent’s children)
The eight workshops form a strong engineering education portfolio: they connect creative exploration, physical circuits, programming, fabrication, simulation, and practical applications. As a whole system, the main opportunity is to make the connections and follow-up pathways explicit.
This assessment concerns the workshop descriptions in the attachment; those descriptions establish intended experiences, rather than demonstrated learning outcomes. BSC-Boulder
Assessment of each workshop
| Workshop | Educational strength | Improvement opportunity | Role in the overall system |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creative Design with micro:bit | Integrates coding, electronics, creativity, and the engineering design process. Students create an invention rather than simply reproduce a circuit. | Offer a common starter challenge followed by extensions. Have students explain the problem their invention solves and demonstrate one improvement after testing. | Design and computational thinking: turns ideas into functioning prototypes. |
| Drop-In Circuit Exploration—PISEC | Open-ended stations encourage questioning and experimentation. Working with university students provides an accessible mentoring connection. | Give each station a short “predict → build → explain” task. Flexible attendance makes a shared minimum learning outcome particularly useful. | Discovery and fundamentals: develops intuition about complete circuits, materials, and electrical behavior. |
| Brightest LEDs Ever | Immediate visual feedback connects code to physical behavior. Light patterns make programming tangible and engaging. | Distinguish programming an effect from understanding the circuit. Include a brief explanation of LED operation, current control, and how color or brightness is produced. | Programmable outputs: introduces how software controls hardware. |
| Soldering Workshops | Provides fabrication and rework experience with through-hole and surface-mount components. This adds practical construction skills to the portfolio. | Define beginner and experienced tracks, a realistic finished product, and inspection criteria. Equipment-specific supervision and handling procedures are central to this workshop. | Fabrication: moves learners from temporary connections toward assembled hardware. This is separate from your solder-free STEAM-TEAMS activities. |
| Electric Motors, Wireless Charging, and EVs | Connects electromagnetism to transportation and a recognizable societal need. The take-home build supports continued exploration. | The subject is broad for two hours. Organize it around one question: How does energy reach a vehicle and produce motion? Distinguish energy transfer, storage, and conversion. | Systems and applications: connects components to an engineered transportation system. |
| PhET Interactive Simulations | Makes otherwise invisible electrical and magnetic behavior easier to explore. Students can vary conditions and compare results without repeatedly rebuilding hardware. | Pair a simulation with a physical demonstration and ask students to explain agreements and differences. Clarify the description’s reference to “first” and “second” workshops within the listed afternoon session. | Models and conceptual understanding: links observation to explanation. |
| See Your Pulse with Light | Offers the richest integration of sensing, electronics, programming, measurement, and signal processing. A biological signal gives the project personal relevance. | Provide a prepared starting circuit and code, then let students investigate noise and averaging. Explain that averaging reduces some noise but cannot correct every motion artifact or measurement error. | Measurement and feedback: shows how engineering extracts useful information from a physical system. |
| Magnets, Motors, and Monster Magic! | Provides the portfolio’s explicit elementary-school entry point. Conductive dough, Snap Circuits, and familiar toys connect creativity with light and motion. | Use short activities with a visible success and a simple explanation: “What completed the circuit?” or “Where did the energy go?” Differentiate questions for younger and older children. | Early engagement and family learning: creates an accessible beginning for the longer engineering pathway. |
Assessment as a whole system
The portfolio has strong technical coherence. Electricity and magnetism provide a common foundation, while each workshop approaches that foundation through a different learning mode.
| System dimension | Assessment |
|---|---|
| Purpose | The descriptions support curiosity, hands-on learning, and exposure to engineering. A shared purpose statement could connect these experiences to continued learning and mentoring. |
| Age coverage | Your elementary workshop extends access below the predominantly middle- and high-school offerings. However, elementary access appears concentrated in one afternoon option. |
| Learning progression | The ingredients support progression from exploration to construction, programming, measurement, and application. The published descriptions do not yet establish an intentional sequence. |
| Complementarity | Physical builds, simulations, and applications reinforce one another. Circuit exploration and LED activities can function as foundations for more integrated projects. |
| Mentorship | Faculty, educators, university students, volunteers, and families create opportunities for intergenerational learning. Those relationships need continuity to become sustained mentorship. |
| Scheduling | Parallel sessions provide choice, but learners cannot attend every connected workshop. Morning and afternoon offerings should therefore work independently while pointing toward a next step. |
| Feedback and improvement | Your reported parent, child, and volunteer feedback is encouraging. A few common questions across workshops would make program-wide improvement easier. |
| Sustainability | Multiple providers broaden capability. Shared facilitator guides, materials lists, and trained backups would make the program easier to repeat and transfer. |
The most useful next step
Connect each workshop to one prerequisite, one observable outcome, and one follow-up opportunity. For example:
| Starting experience | Natural next step | Connection to explain |
|---|---|---|
| Monster Magic / beginner circuits | Circuit exploration or PhET | Why a complete circuit produces light or motion |
| Circuit exploration | Programmable LEDs or micro:bit | How a program changes a circuit’s behavior |
| Programmable LEDs | Pulse-with-light project | How light can become part of a measurement system |
| Motors and magnetic fields | EV and wireless-charging activities | How electromagnetic effects transfer energy and create motion |
These are proposed pathways, not required age-based sequences.
For the STEAM-TEAMS model, the event can also develop facilitators: a university student guides a child, learns to explain technical ideas, leads a station, and eventually prepares another volunteer. That creates two simultaneous outcomes—children developing engineering understanding and volunteers developing teaching and leadership capacity.
The strongest system-level improvement would be a closing invitation that answers: “What can I explore next, where can I do it, and who can help me?” Your recurring STEAM-TEAMS sessions can provide that continuity beyond a single Build Something Cool event.
Examples: Fun with Play Doh Circuits with AI-Assisted Drawings
2026 Cool Science Carnival Day and Festival: IEEE Pikes Peak Section Hands-On STEM Outreach
Signup Form for Parents and Kids
This is for interested parents who would like to attend the follow-up sessions at the 21C Library. These sessions are held on 5 Oct and 12 Oct during Cool Science Festival (3-18 Oct 2026). IEEE members interested in volunteering should use the volunteer signup page.
5 Oct 2026 (Mon) or 12 Oct 2026 (Mon), 5 pm-7pm
The following dates are a continuation of Snap Circuits and PhET Simulations: plus Magnets, Motors, Microcontrollers, and Monster Magic Hands-on demos given on Carnival Day, 3 Oct 2026 involving electromagnets, levitating pencils, AI-robotics, and more! Please register for this event for either 5 Oct 2026 (Mon) or 12 Oct 2026 (Mon). The presentations are the same for both dates, so you need to only select one date that is convenient for you. These meetings will be held at the ENT Conference Room at 21st Century Library, 1175 Chapel Hills Drive, 5 pm - 7 pm. We can only accommodate a total of 20 parents and kids.
Click on the purple checkbox to see the multimedia content. This serves as an example of an interactive hotspot. You can enlarge to full screen by clicking on the upper rightmost icon.
Compounding Leadership Capacity
Leadership capacity rarely appears overnight.
It is built one person at a time.
Recruit. Engage. Mentor. Activate. Lead.
At first, progress can seem painfully slow. A monthly meeting may attract only a handful of people. A new volunteer takes time to develop. A mentoring relationship may produce no immediately visible result.
But that may be the wrong way to measure progress.
John Wooden developed the principles behind his Pyramid of Success over many years and continued refining their implementation throughout his coaching career. The championships were highly visible outcomes. Much of the development that made those outcomes possible was far less visible.
I see a similar principle in volunteer organizations and STEM education.
When we recruit one person, develop their skills, build their confidence, and eventually give them ownership, we have increased capacity by one person.
But something much more important happens when that person begins developing someone else.
Leadership stops being additive and starts becoming multiplicative.
One mentor develops a leader.
That leader develops another leader.
That leader creates another opportunity for someone else.
The question therefore changes from:
“How many people participated?”
to:
“How many people are now capable of helping someone else participate, contribute, and lead?”
That is compounding leadership capacity.
End of Term Report