Findlay math students make their own STEM exhibit

FINDLAY — Students enrolled in the discrete math/computer science class at Findlay High School are working on a special project this semester. They are creating a STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) exhibit that will be included in the Children's Museum of Findlay when it opens at its new location. "When I give them challenges, they rise to the occasion," said Jordan Nugeness. Math teachers Nugeness and Lindsay Sandor have about 100 juniors and seniors between the two of them who are taking the class. Discrete math/computer science falls into that STEM category, Nugeness said. "It's funny because they're like, there's not even any math in this class. It is math. It's not typical like Algebra or something like that. It's more problem solving," she explained. The idea for the exhibit came up last year when Nugeness received information about a grant offered by Battelle for a STEM project. "My daughter went to the Children's Museum a lot, and I knew they were looking for a new space. I was like, I wonder if we could make a project out of this," she said. Nugeness reached out to the museum. "I said I was considering applying for the grant. What do you think if our kids were to make a STEM exhibit for your new location? That kind of started the conversation," she said. Nugeness filled out the paperwork. She was later notified that they had been chosen for the $5,000 award. "I had to be pretty specific about what I wanted to do, but we really just presented ideas to the kids and now we have completely taken a step back," she said. "We've been like, what do you want to do with this? It's all led by them." It's been difficult trying to coordinate that many students to plan for the exhibit. So 10 action teams have been formed that are responsible for a specific part of the project. "We gave the kids a budget. They have to figure out how much space they think they would need. We told them, dream big and be ready to accommodate," Nugeness said. The teachers also told the students to come up with three different financial plans — something that costs next to nothing, something that has a reasonable price tag, and something that has no budget. One of the ideas involves trying to bring to life is a pattern powerwall which is a visual display of design patterns used in software development. Nugeness said this exhibit would introduce children to skip counting, Fibonacci sequence and binary, all of which are number systems. "Part of the challenge is our kids know what those things are, but we'd have to scale it down to be age appropriate," she said. The age range of children who visit the museum is 4 to 10, she said. Another group is using logic gates which are fundamental building blocks in digital electronics. "So we talked about using circuits where lights turn on based on certain things. That's kind of your big ask because it's going to cost some money," she said. "And then we talked about how could we make that smaller." Pixel art, a math maze and an encryption station are also on the list. The students have met once and are planning for the exhibit. "And they had so many questions, I think I said, 'I don't know. That's a really great question,' about 100 times," Nugeness said. "It was just really interesting. I think it's the first time in their lives that they haven't been given a project where the teacher knows every single answer to everything." Students were supposed to take a field trip and see the building space, but a recent snowstorm put a damper on the visit, Nugeness said. The trip will be rescheduled, she said. "I kind of felt after we met, the kids really had ideas rolling. But I think until we see the space and they can understand the vision, I think we're kind of at a standstill," she said. A budgeting and ordering team will keep track of every group's budget. "And they're kind of the yes-no people," she said. "I told them they might have to go back to a group and say that's too expensive. We can't do that. What can we do for you instead?" A design and layout team is in charge of finding out how much wall and floor space they will need. "What they're working on it, which I think is really cool, too, is we wanted all of our kids' names to be in it," said Nugeness. "They're going to transfer every one's name into binary. And they want one of the walls to have wallpaper or something. So when they go in, all of our names would be in it, but no one would know what it says but us." There are a lot of English language learners in the class, she added. They talked about having those kids help translate some of the activities into other languages to be inclusive of children who might be coming. "Could we do different alphabets so that they can figure out their name in binary, no matter what their alphabet looks like," she said. "That's something else we talked about. How can we include all this diversity we have into our exhibit." Nugeness said her daughter, who will soon be 6, will be excited to visit the museum and find out their her mom's students created this exhibit. "She knows a lot of my students, and she'll think it's cool that people she knows made this," Nugeness said. She's hoping within the next couple of months the project reallystarts to come together. "I want to see the kids see it. They're going to be proud, like they did something really special. I think the kids are going to pull it off," she said.