STEM Academy builds X-Carve as their project

This year I provided the X-Carve in all its boxed glory to the local Stem Academy at Central Virginia Community Center Lynchburg Virginia. The STEM Academy develops High School students to earn a diploma in Mechatronics that gets them business ready for the mechanical and electrical engineering technical trades.

The X-Carve is an excellent project where the requirement to apply mechanical, electrical and IT skills to build the unit and configure the systems to have a working product. The team broke into groups and assumed responsibility for these components of skill and talent. Lots of learning opportunities, mistakes and problem solving helped the team develop better skills in the project. We had informal leaders take charge for a specific issue, task or challenge that the group worked as a team to create the final result. Thanks to the inventables support staff for their great efforts and understanding as we evolved through the assembly and testing. See the following link for the first run of the unit. XLR8 STEM Academy

10 Likes

This is really great to see. I bet they learned a lot.

They did. Both through making assumptions and having to rework, to trouble shooting, soldering wires, reading directions and working out parts that the documents do not cover well. Great product for students to learn on.

In the intro section I miss named CVCC. It is the Central Virginia Community College.