We need volunteers to represent Lambda during the National Engineers’ Week (E-Week) 2014. Planning meetings are underway for next year’s events to take place from February 16-22, 2014. If interested, contact Sally Oh, at the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity to receive an invitation to the next planning meeting.
====Update 10/24/13
A message from Sally Oh:
Hello everyone, we are just getting started with planning E-Week 2014 and we hope that your organization will be involved in some capacity. For those who are new to E-Week, please find attached document with some background information.
E-Week 2014
This year’s theme will be focused on “Bionic Limbs.” If you have not had a chance, please check out the video: http://www.nbclearn.com/innovation.
We have the Madison Auditorium reserved on February 19th and 20th, so the E-Week program will be on one of those days.
School Selection
This year, we are hoping to have the groups involved in the selection of the schools and/or organization that will be invited to participate in the E-Week program. The plan is for each affinity group (that wants to) to select their own school/organization that they would like to partner with. They would then go to the partner school /organization (or have the students come here) prior to the E-Week event in February and conduct prep lessons*. An example of what the prep lessons can look like (this is not the real lesson plan, that will be decided by the curriculum committee):
- Lesson #1: Innovation Overview
- Introduction to the USPTO and Intellectual Property
- Science of Innovation Overview Video
- Lesson #2: Introduction to Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kits
- Familiarize with the kits and the programming software
- Build basic robots using the Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kits
- Lesson #3: Introduction to Bioengineering and Bionic Limbs/Exoskeletons
- Lecture on Bioengineering
- Bionic Limbs video
- Lesson #4: Build Bionic Limbs/Exoskeletons using Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kits
*These Prep lessons can be done all at once during a single visit or scattered throughout multiple visits. It’s solely the choice of each affinity group and how they wish to work with their partner school/organization. What’s easiest for them. The key is to make sure that the students learn the content of each lesson plan.
Action Items:
- Please discuss with your group’s leaders to see if your group can commit to doing these prep lessons prior to E-Week. The format of how you do the lessons will be up to the groups (ex: 4 times for 1 hour, 2 times for 2 hours, etc.) If your group can provide enough people to do the lessons, which will be provided, please let us know by COB October 30th.
- If your group can commit to this, please provide the name of the school/organization by COB November 6th. We will provide a flyer and model invitation for your use. In thinking about which school to invite, we ask that you consider looking for a school that has Title 1 status; has underserved students and; has an interest in STEM education.
If your group is interested but may not have enough manpower, please consider partnering with another group to work together. J It is also worth mentioning that if your group does not have the resources to work with a school/organization directly, you can still participate in E-week planning and help with the day of activities.
Curriculum Development
If you are interested in working on the developing the curriculum for the prep lessons and the E-Week event, please plan to attend the meeting next Wednesday, October 30th, a meeting planner will be sent out separately. Please note that this meeting is only to discuss the curriculum and there will be meetings in the future to discuss further planning.
Please let us know if you have any questions regarding E-Week. Thank you!
Sally S. Oh
EEO Manager (Diversity Programs)
Office of EEO and Diversity
US Patent and Trademark Office