About

Central Park STEAM promotes education for youth in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art & Math).

Past Activities

We have quite a history starting in 2016 as parent volunteers in founding a small elementary school with a vision of project-based-learning (PBL) in a child-centered, personalized approach.

Central Park STEAM Robotics Team originally coined the name from a focus on robotics by supporting project-based-learning (PBL) through robotics activities. We taught free classes at lunch and after school to students of diverse socio-economic backgrounds for FIRST LEGO League Junior, FIRST LEGO League, Wonder League, VexIQ Challenge and the Hour of Code. We invested in loaner pool robotics equipment that families on free and reduced lunch could check out for free. We covered robotics competition registrations for low income families. We also provided free summer robotics camps for low income families.

We expanded to follow student interest in Destination Imagination, Tech Challenge, Math Olympiad, Maker Faire, 3D design/printing, Sewing, Art, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Quest4Space, Exploravision, Machine Learning 4 Kids and more.

We integrated PBL through securing Dairy Council presentations with cows and calves; WERC presentations with live owls, opossums, snakes; Beekeeper presentations with live beehives; Water Conservation presentations by Santa Clara Valley Water District, and field trips to places such as the Oroville Visitor Center, San Luis Reservoir Visitor Center, Pyramid Lake Visitor Center, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Ames and more.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, we 3D printed personal protective equipment for workers in need who had less access to equipment. Boxes of PPE were shipped to Native American Indian support organizations, Filipino nurses associations, dental hygienists, social workers and custodians at hospitals.

Awards

Central Park STEAM won “Best in Class” at MakerFaire Bay Area 2017 for our “Design Challenge Tower” booth.

We had a FIRST LEGO League team advance to the Top 20 FIRST Global Innovation Awards. We had FLL teams win 1st Place for Robot Game and Robot Design Award at Google. Our teams have won the Mechanical Design Award at the FLL Silicon Valley District Championship. Our teams have won the Champions Award in FLL at Monticello Academy and the Champions Award in FLL at Santa Teresa High School. Our teams have won the Robot Design Award in FLL at Intel.

Central Park STEAM had a team advance to the Destination Imagination State Championship.

We had VexIQ Challenge teams win the Judge Awards at Quarry Lane. We had Vex VRC teams advance to state championship.

Central Park STEAM had two teams of students advance to the Wonder League finals.

We had a team run thermodynamics experiments on the International Space Station through Quest4Space.

In 2017, our founder and President was recognized by United States Congressman Ro Khanna with a “Certificate for Special Congressional Recognition” in honor of our community service.

Our work was also recognized by the Santa Clara Unified School District when our President was awarded the “Volunteer of the Year” Award for Central Park Elementary by Santa Clara Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Stanley Rose.

Future

In 2022 and 2023, most of our founding families had moved on from Central Park Elementary and Central Park STEAM shifted to a community focus.

In the summer of 2023, three of our student leaders chose to lead a team of online Biochemistry Literacy for Kids students to take on the MIT Zero Robotics Challenge. They programmed the Astrobee robot on the International Space Station in the Lunabee challenge. This team, “Moon Dust Pirates”, placed 3rd in the 1st round qualifying for the finals aboard the ISS. They finished with astronaut Woody Hoburn running their code live on the ISS to finish 4th place overall as the “Space Beans” alliance.

Talk to one of our youth leaders to see what more is possible.

Showreel

EV3 code programmed by 4th and 5th graders that would later run on the International Space Station with their thermodynamics project.
EV3 code programmed by 4th and 5th graders that would later run on the International Space Station with their thermodynamics project.
Our 4th and 5th graders achieved the Top 20 finals worldwide of the FIRST Global Innovation Awards. This was their short video. During the process of teaching students machine learning, we actually found bugs and helped to update the Machine Learning for Kids curriculum.
This video is an overview of the school’s STEAM/PBL but you can see some of the robotics activities we organized to engage children. This video shows our Dash/Dot and VexIQ robotics setup designed to inspire all children.
In 2023, three of our students led an MIT Zero Robotics team under the name “Moon Dust Pirates”. Recruiting students from an online class (Biochemistry Literacy for Kids), they coded in C++ to control the Astrobee robot on the International Space Station (ISS). They qualified to lead the finals on the ISS under the alliance name “Space Beans”. It can be viewed in Part1 at time 52:00. The finals leaderboard can be viewed at Part 2 at 1:47. The final round for Space Beans Alliance #3 on the ISS is in Part 2 at time 2:02. https://web.mit.edu/webcast/zerorobotics/sum23/ . This was also a great first for our formerly little kids now growing up and leading youth initiatives as middle schoolers and high schoolers!