Let’s face it: We all want to code. From President Obama to Will.i.am everyone is on a coding kick.
MESA has held coding competitions for years, but a new partnership has expanded that effort into a new national competition.
In preparation for the new National Engineering Design Competition: Prosthetic Arm 2.0, MESA hosted “train the trainer” coding sessions this summer for MESA teachers across the state.
MESA partnered with SparkFun, a Colorado-based electronics and science kit manufacturer, to provide these professional development workshops using the programming platform Arduino, which will add power to the MESA National Challenge.
Teachers will return to their classrooms this fall equipped to teach Arduino in their MESA classes with access to educational materials SparkFun provided through its program portal.
The Prosthetic Arm Challenge 2.0 is a part of MESA Days — yearly hands-on engineering competitions that are a core piece of MESA’s 45 years of success. The competitions are aligned with the California State Board of Education and Next Generation Science Standards.
MESA Days give educationally disadvantaged students exposure to STEM and STEM careers through employing theory to solve real world problems and testing their solutions against their peers.
This year’s challenge will take the current mechanical prosthetic arm design project to the next level with the use of circuitry with an Arduino kit. Student teams participate in the full R&D experience by preparing a technical paper and academic display, defending their process and product before a panel of professionals and compete with teams from the other ten MESA USA states in performance.
To find out how you can help MESA students succeed in this exciting coding competition, please contact Mae Torlakson.