Science Week (20 till 24 October) : IBM Belgium hosts workshops for students to spark their interest for STEM

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IBM is one of the sponsors of the Science Week in Flanders (www.wetenschapsweek.be) which is taking place from 20 till 24 October 2014. During that week students from secondary schools can attend a range of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) workshops in universities, scientific institutions and corporations like IBM. There is also a limited portfolio of workshops for pupils from the 5th and 6th grade primary school.

IBM will open its doors for two distinct initiatives:

• On 22 October we will host an interactive workshop for students of the 1st grade (secondary school) to stimulate their creativity and problem-solving ability and boost teamwork. In small groups, they will first learn how to design, build and program a robot by using a LegoMindStorm set. Subsequently, they will learn to program by using Scratch, a free programming language which allows to create interactive stories, games, and animations.
• On 23 October we move to a somewhat younger target audience. Pupils of the 5th or 6th grade (primary school) will join us for an interactive workshop around two project-based experiments. One in the physics space and focusing on the power of different materials (“Building a bridge with spaghetti and linguini”) and one in the chemistry space and focusing on calculating the acidity and evaluating the health impact (“The Softdrink experiment”). Both experiments are assets from TeachersTryScience.org which is an initiative of the Hall of Science and IBM.

These workshops are free of charge and take place in the morning – from 9:00 till 12:30. If you know a school who would be interested to attend, do encourage them to sign up via www.wetenschapsweek.be. IBMers: helping hands are welcome! More info at katrien.hoogewijs@be.ibm.com.