43 Research Fellows 17 Projects!

May 29 Imagination Celebration Celebrates 44 3rd – 5th grade research fellows and incredible STEM projects

The community is invited to see the incredible projects that the Baden Academy Research Fellows are doing. We have an Imagination Celebration coming up this Friday, May 29, from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at the Baden Academy gymnasium. The event will feature a celebration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics: including science fair projects and the 44 Research Fellows (all between grades 3 to 5) and their 17 projects including…

Bring a donation of cat food or litter for the Kitty Whisperers and some money for bake sales and student authored books!

Gavin, 5th grade author, has completed his second book The Little Blue Penguins of North Sydney Harbour. Conservationists, park rangers, scientists and students from Australia worked online with Gavin to get the details right and become characters in his book.

Entrepreneurs Kadie, Brian, Owen and Ariel have opened the online doors of BadenDreams.com. They’ve worked with students and fellows to merchandise some of the great images and logos produced in the school and research fellow programs. Profits go toward bring Dream Flight Adventures into our school. Mentors include the Beaver County Youth Entrepreneurship Program.

Nerd Battalion, with commanders Courtney and Elise, have worked hard to make technology accessible and working for the students. At the beginning of the year, they recruited one student from each classroom to join the Battalion. They tested batteries trying to find out why the netbooks weren’t working. Finding their batteries all functioning well, Elise undertook a difficult science fair engineering project of reconfiguring the carts so that plugs did not come apart and students could be held accountable for plugging in their computers. A new badging system was devised to help make the kids accountable. Now the girls are preparing some help videos to give individual RDs at hand resources to help troubleshoot problems in the classroom! Way to go girls. Visit their website at nerdbattalion.weebly.com

Kitty Whisperers Jadyn and Miriam, have had an incredible year. They premiered their documentary on the Colony Cat program at the Duquesne Univeristy law conference on animal ethics in the Fall. Since then, they continue to visit the Humane Society and make regular videos to encourage adoptions and TNR of the free roaming, stray, and feral cats of Beaver County.

Heroes – an all school music video. Jadyn E and Lexi continue editing and need two more last shots! Their video will premiere at the Imagination Celebration at the Opening Ceremonies in the Music Room at 6:30.

Melody Nation Music Festival – Congratulations to Jacquee and Ava! They raised $408 dollars toward sound equipment for our arts department. They are working hard to get the permissions to have all videos and photos uploaded from this incredible event to the website http://melodynationfestival.weebly.com/ On a very sad note, the venue owned by research fellow Jacquee Paul and donated for the Melody Nation, the Venue at Harmony Ridge, burned down last week

Don’t Smoke Ava and the team are saddened that this book will not be done for the Imagination Celebration, but the concept and existing artwork and photos are spectacular. Summer and fall dates are being scheduled to finish.

Robotics The robots are loose! Miss Wagerhofer is taking the six task bots for a test run seeing how they can be used in mathematics lessons for next year. In the meantime the team is getting ready to hold robot races at the Imagination Celebration. And congrats to the roboticists for the Wizard of Oz play! http://badenacademy.org/medialab-blog/article/?A-Robotic-Wicked-Witch-of-the-East-86

RFID FedEx is working behind the scenes to have a working prototype of the new dragon tags soon. In the meantime, Owen is one of the fellows selected for a live TED Talk at the Imagination Celebration and is working hard to have his talk ready. His project, to safeguard the confidential information of students while providing a easy access to emergency information for our youngest bus travelers. http://badenacademy.org/medialab-blog/article/?Media-Lab-Programmers-Tour-FedEx-Facility-82

App Inverters – Mobile App Development Team Congratulations to the App Inverters for uploading their first mobile app to the Google Play Store! Visit the Google Play Store and download the free app! Don’t forget to leave a review and comment. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=appinventor.ai_BACSMediaLab.final&hl=en

Baden Academy TV This team has been incredibly busy all year producing a weekly TV show for our students and occasional promotional video. Look for their TED Talk to share what they’ve learned (and it has been a lot!) They’ll be running a green screen for kids at the festival. Stop and see how you look on camera!

Baden Academy Naturalists met throughout the year, augmenting the Monarch Way Station set up by Erin last year, adding some citizen science collaborative with Cornell to watch the hummingbirds, and working with a local bee keeper to help respond to the crisis in honey production the new Walmart inadvertently caused. All of there activities have been posted online to use by our classroom teachers. http://baden-naturalists.weebly.com/

K2k Activities – Kids Activity Center Kamryn has build an extraordinary online resource for any parent or teacher looking to empower older kids to play and interact with younger ones! http://kidsactivitycenter.weebly.com/

Cruelty Free Cosmetics Veronica co-wrote Hamster Fun Facts last year, discovering that her favorite animals are used for testing of cosmetics and household products. She sponsored several Cruelty Free Cosmetic workshops through the year. ASPCA, the beneficiaries of her book, have nominated Veronica as the 2015 Humane Kid of the Year.

Skylar R, Captain of the Baden Academy Chess Club provided encouragement, acknowledgement, support and celebration for the 44 students at our school who have begun working through the amazing Chesscademy software of 7 time grandmaster Andrew Ng. http://badenacademychessclub.weebly.com/

Kate, Evan, and Nathaniel of the Rube Goldberg Team has created a 5 foot tall resettable rube Goldberg machine for our hallways.

Aubrey, Aaron and Damon of the Recycling Buds have implemented a paper recycling program in the school and are working on introducing worm composting next year.

Contact Ellen Cavanaugh, Director or the Baden Academy Media Lab for more information about the Imagination Celebration or bringing a Research Fellow program to your school or community center! [email protected]