Martial arts, calligraphy, driving, watching movies, hanging out with friends
The Splash Zone is a free, interactive workshop series hosted in partnership with the Mitchell Park Library in Palo Alto, CA. Kids can create their own dream islands, carnival games, roller coasters, and water cycle simulators, all while learning content aligned with PAUSD school district curriculum and state standards. Each workshop costs around $50 to run first-time, with recurring costs dropping to $20 after the first workshop. The Splash Zone aims to expand to neighboring libraries and, eventually, international centers to bring hands-on engagement across the globe.
In my free time, I watch college and NFL football, play the clarinet, write about sports, play video games, and go outside with my friends.
Project Summary:
In my project, I hope to help students learn math through sports in order to create a more relaxed learning environment while encouraging students to gain a love for math. My inspiration for this project came from seeing those around me continue to bash math for how boring and difficult it is to understand. This made me think about how math could be taught to better keep students engaged while making certain aspects of the subject easier to understand. With these goals in mind, I hope to help those in my community and surrounding communities with Math-At-Play.
I love to play and watch basketball! I enjoy doing STEM research, participate in debate competitions. I’m a guitarist and play in local restaurants, farmer markets.
My project, “The Future Brighter” is aimed to address the STEM deficiency that we face in our country. According to ACT data, not enough students in our country are equipped for STEM opportunities—now or in the future. USA currently ranks third in the world and produces only 12% of STEM graduates compared to China. I firmly believe that STEM awareness and interests must be created among children at an early stage, during the elementary school years. To address this problem, every community, county and state in our country have to work together in order to make US gain a leading position relative to other countries. To do my part of addressing this problem, I founded The Future Brighter (TFB), a nonprofit organization with a mission to create awareness of STEM education in our local communities. I conduct STEM clubs in my area elementary, middle schools and engage them in various science and math activities to motivate STEM interests among children. Please visit https://www.thefuturebrighter.org/ for more information about my organization.
I enjoy programming (mainly in C++ and Java), especially with friends on collaborative projects. I mainly do game engine or graphics programming, but I’m always up for anything!
My project, Ethics & Algorithms, will create a space for students to discuss the implications of technology in our daily lives. With topics like privacy, fake news, and technological addiction, I think that these discussions will be useful and interesting for all involved. By stressing that these issues have no right answer, I will encourage participants to come up with their own ideas and debate with others.
I love to play basketball with my brother, and I also enjoy playing the piano. I have been performing magic to my friends and family for several years, so I am often found with a deck of cards in my hand!
Although I was able to watch “The Magic School Bus” and The Physics Show since I was very young, many of my peers were first introduced to STEM at school – in a repetitive and somewhat dull fashion. My project, Magical STEM aims to combat this problem by combining magic and STEM; I hope to teach STEM to young children in a new and engaging manner.
What do you like to do in your free time?:I enjoy reading books, photography, listening to music, and traveling to new places.
Personally, I have wanted to start a communitt service program for conservation efforts of the Northern Diamondback Terrapin (a species of turtle) since I learned about them during my freshman year in a marine biology class. I began to look for platforms that would allow me to develop my project and, potentially, make a difference to the conservation efforts in the near future.
For my project, I hope to educate other about that conservation of the species by setting up booths in local libraries and presenting to students at local schools about the importance of the species. I will also distribute petitions about the use of BRDs (bycatch reduction devices) to prevent accidental trapping of the special in other commercial fishing devices, such as crap pots.
What do you like to do in your free time? I love playing and watching soccer and basketball. I also enjoy competing in robotics competitions.
My Project, Within the reach, address malnutrition in kids. I first got the idea when I was visiting family in India and I experienced first hand the poverty and hardships the kids faced. They were malnourished, rejected, and hopeless about their situation. I realized that they should be the focus of this project. I choose to address malnutrition in children over other important issues like education because before children can take advantage of educational resources they must have food in their stomachs to fuel them.
The goal for Within the Reach is to spread the idea of kids helping kids. Other students like me can share their talents by teaching camps where ever they are. Within the Reach would help these students develop curriculum and help them advertise their event. In return, the students would receive volunteer hours and first hand experience on teaching and communication skills.
I enjoy practicing Taekwondo, exploring the outdoors, and robotics!
My project STEM2Leaf Robotics is an organization that teaches underserved youth in San Diego County about robotics, specifically programming and engineering. STEM is an important aspect of youth education, but proper STEM education should go beyond traditional mathematics and science and include robotics. In addition, learning robotics is often a fun way of learning STEM, by moving beyond the theoretical into the practical, and it offers many real-world opportunities in the workplace. However, the problem is that underserved students are at a disadvantage because most robotics programs are expensive. My project offers free robotics education, including training and materials. We host monthly workshops at two Boys and Girls Clubs in San Diego County (La Colonia Branch and Griset Branch) where we teach girls and boys about engineering principles and various robotics parts and modules, including various sensor technology! This past year STEM2Leaf Robotics served over 80 girls and boys, and we plan to expand further into a third branch, host cross-branch competitions, and host FIRST LEGO League fundraising workshops to enable these workshops to be self-sustaining! STEM2Leaf Robotics hopes to help as many students as possible through free robotics education!
I enjoy learning new things and sharing them with others, cooking, reading, recording a podcast about my experience at an overnight wilderness summer camp, spending time with my friends, and watching movies.
Everything started with the problem. My grandma had trouble pouring hot tea because of her night blindness and I wanted to help her. I joined a group where people who are visually impaired or blind meet monthly to talk about products and services, they find useful in daily life. As I went to the meetings, I noticed one common factor. It was practically impossible for them to find out what devices, services or apps were available for them, other than through word of mouth. This is where the idea of a centralized website called WikiAbility (wikiability.org), similar to Wikipedia, that would be a single pane of glass view for all things available for people who are visually impaired was born from. Since I had experience developing websites, I found this idea feasible. I shared the idea with the group and they loved it. I believed that it would be great to inspire and engage other young people to contribute into the accessibility world. However, there isn’t much awareness about this issue in the current community, and many children see making a difference as out of reach. So, I also decided to start raising awareness through a campaign where I visit schools in my local county and show them that they can make a difference in other people’s lives. I needed help getting started and I found that the Davidson YS Ambassador Program is the perfect opportunity for me to achieve my goals of making a positive difference in the lives of others.
What do you like to do in your free time?:In my free time, I love being in nature. One of my favorite things is going to the beach to feel the breeze and search for starfish. I love their little suction cups tickling my palms. If I’m not at the beach, I’m out riding my black bike with pink streaks, exploring the neighborhood! I also love reading and writing—from poetry to novels—and playing the violin. I’ve even been lucky enough to perform on the world stage with other young musicians! Additionally, I love researching current events by writing journalism, sharing and expressing my beliefs through publications. The older I get, the more I realize that following these creative pursuits increases the size of my world and steadily makes distant dreams possible. In other moments of free time, I simply enjoy playing with my cat Daisy, a tabby that I imagine to be my little grey and black tiger. She appeared in my first fantasy novel “Daisy and the Birdcage”, where she goes on an adventure with her friends in a fantasy land I created called Skyworld. I chose Daisy as my main character because she brings me joy every day.
My prospective nonprofit organization Girl Pride is inspired by former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let Girls Learn initiative, which seeks to educate and empower the 62 million girls worldwide without access to education. Unfortunately, our current administration has rolled back this program. Our mission at Girl Pride is that like-minded girls around the world will continue to reflect the Let Girls Learn message and spirit. We work to serve displaced, refugee, and migrant girls’ educational, social, and emotional needs by raising awareness of their situation through the development and showcasing of their incredible, creative talents.We also organize various creative fundraising projects and donate the proceeds to partner organizations whose missions align with ours.
Girl Pride’s initial goals are primarily to connect students in the US with Syrian refugee children living in Jordan and migrant children from Central America who recently crossed our southern border, through our existing Crossing Borders international pen-pal program. We are currently working to expand the impact of Crossing Borders across the Syosset Central School District on Long Island, NY, and to the rest of the US. Through fundraising efforts, we are also extending the creative workshops run by our partnering organization, Another Kind of Girl Collective (AKGC), in the Za���atari camp in Jordan. In conjunction with another partner, Stone Soup magazine, Girl Pride would also like to build an online space to publish winning and commended art contest entries. By motivating young refugee artists and recognizing their work with regular, prized creative contests, we create an online community for these marginalized girls to share their stories and perspectives, inspiring each other and the world. Potentially, Girl Pride sees this becoming a platform for all displaced, transitory, or migrant children, especially girls, to connect and build each other up. Lastly, Girl Pride is currently actively helping address our own country’s problematic relationship with Central American migrant children at the border. Given the level of trauma and stress many migrant children are experiencing (many of whom were separated from their families), this is urgent now more than ever.
If you would like to join us as a pen-pal or charter your own Crossing Borders chapter in your school or region, please contact me at sabrinaguo658@gmail.com or info@girlpride.org (our official site is currently under construction).We would be delighted to provide mentorship and assistance to found your own chapter and begin your journey.
Name: Sid S. Age: 14 Lives in: Reston, VA Project Title: The Right Brain
I like to play guitar: I like rock music. I like learning about how to invest and business. Working on my Ambassadors project is also a hobby that I’m liking a lot. I like making YouTube videos so that goes well with my project. Learning about business also helps my project because a business doesn’t have to be for-profit. There are many ways my music skill can help my project: playing to fundraise, playing in my video, and a few others.
My project, The Right Brain, helps underprivileged kids that have learning differences like ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia. Currently, I have a YouTube channel which talks about topics related to learning differences and I have a website and Facebook page that have discussion forums and other tools to help kids overcome LDs. My main goals are 1) to help schools identify more children with learning differences 2) to help children that can’t afford therapy and give them low or no-cost help and 3) to educate the general population on what learning differences are and how to deal with the symptoms.
My inspiration for this project was that I wanted to help the community in some way and realized that there are a lot of families who don’t have the awareness or resources to help their kids who have LDs.
Check out my website over here!: https://www.therightbrain.net/
Name: Yu-Ting C. Age: 14 Lives in: Palo Alto, CA Project Title: Project ROPEs (Research Opportunities with Programming Experiences)
I like to ski (in the wintertime), read books & the news, code, and hang out with friends. As a passionate Star Wars fan, I enjoy anything related to the epic saga. Also, having participated in the regional science fair for the past three years (winning numerous awards), I love conducting research in the fields of astrophysics and computer science.
I have always loved helping others, and have done so in numerous scenarios, from sports like taekwondo and skiing, to academics such as writing and math. As a middle schooler, I completed science fair projects without much guidance available; now, after getting valuable experience and opportunities from participating, I wish to pay forward all the things I have learned to current middle school students. Combining my passion for helping others with my various experiences, Project ROPEs will inspire students to take advantage of the opportunities in doing research.
Project ROPEs (Research Opportunities with Programming Experiences) intends to teach the fundamentals of research and programming to students, guiding them in their journey of scientific research. This will include advocating and spreading the word about the regional science fair and other research opportunities through talks and workshops (starting at local middle schools), as well as hosting research-oriented programming classes in the community. Project ROPEs will benefit public middle schoolers, with underrepresented minorities in mind, by helping them to seize research opportunities early on through programming. Learning to do a science fair project will unlock opportunities from meeting mentors and professional scientists or engineers (or even Nobel Laureates) to the opportunity to win awards or attend special workshops; from being able to participate in higher-level competitions to gaining experience with more in-depth research. Their experiences will foster an interest in scientific research, leading them to continue exploration in STEM.
The website for Project ROPEs will soon be available at projectropes.org with many resources and information about conducting scientific research for middle school students. Please email me at ychang@projectropes.org.
Started in 1999, the Davidson Institute for Talent Development is a 501(c)3 private operating foundation. Our mission is to recognize, nurture and support profoundly intelligent young people ages 18 and under, and to provide opportunities for them to develop their talents to make a positive difference. Profoundly gifted students are those who score in the 99.9th percentile on IQ and achievement tests. Read more about this population in this article.