Students from Ruth Henderson’s HyperStream group were recognized at the state Prometheus Awards ceremony recently.
Congratulations to Stilwell Junior High Science Teacher Ruth Henderson and her students who are members of the after school club called HyperStream. They were recently recognized at the annual Prometheus Awards at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines.
HyperStream is an after school club that features a partnership between business and education, focusing on students in grade 6th-12th. HyperStream pairs schools/learning centers with local technology professionals to learn about the breadth of technology careers in a Club atmosphere.
As part of the Prometheus Awards Ceremony, the Technology Association of Iowa highlights and recognizes the successful efforts of selected HyperStream clubs.
This years recognition at the middle school level went to the Stilwell HyperStream Club, sponsored by Ruth Henderson.
Here’s the script from their recognition at the Prometheus Awards, which gives you a feel for what activities the group was involved in.
Prometheus Dinner Script
Hello, I’m Joshua Burke from FBL Financial Group
Partnerships:
Hyperstream can be summed up in one word: partnership. Our partnerships began with Hyperstream’s call for sponsors and ambassadors, which for Stilwell Junior High was answered by both Farm Bureau and IBM, two great companies that believe in creating local opportunities for excellence.
Teacher Champion:
The partnerships continued with the tremendous and tireless support of our teacher champion, Ruth Henderson.
Student Excellence:
And, most importantly partnerships were forged with the amazing and dedicated students of Stilwell Junior High. I have had the privilege of watching both the ambassadors and students grow in the midst of this time, and I knew we had just the right club mix when I saw our students having trouble choosing between the robotics and the web project. Within the Stilwell club we’ve had:
● 65 students attend at least one meeting with an average attendance of 20 students per meeting
● The club has seen roughly a 70/30 split between young men and women in attendance.
Experiences:
I’d like to share with you two of the best moments from each of our club project teams. On the robotics side, I witnessed a student create a robot that would enter the combination lock on a school locker with the press of a button, I am still amazed by the ingenuity and creativity he brought to that endeavor. And, on the web team, I’ve been pleased to see our students go from looking at HTML code with glassy eyes, to watching them editing code on their own to obtain a desired effect on their pages. And, in the web group, I am particularly proud of the teamwork, patient understanding and the diversity of skills each has brought to the project.
Transition:
I’d like to introduce our next speaker this evening, Dani Roth.
Hi, I’m Dani Roth and in the 8th grade.
One of the reasons I like Hypersteam is because of the diversity of things we get to do. Technology is such a broad field and our club has done projects in various technology areas. You can be in Hyperstream even if you don’t like technical things like robotics. Developing a website for our school has helped me realize how much I enjoy the technology field.
(Pointing at the slide of website screen shots). Here are some of the websites we have created that will benefit the Stilwell community. We built a website we called Homework Help that will assist students in doing their homework. Another website has favorite recipes that students have chosen. Another website is a listing of the various clubs and organizations sponsored by the school that students can participate in. This is information that is not centrally available to the students previously.
A special thanks goes out to Mrs. Henderson, our teacher sponsor, for her efforts in getting a Hyperstream club at our school and for our ambassadors from Farm Bureau and IBM for teaching us about opportunities in technology.
Hi, I’m Ben Burright and in the 8th grade.
One of the reasons I have enjoyed Hyperstream over the past year is because we work in teams and help each other out. I’m the lead on the Robotics team. Hyperstream gives me the opportunity to work together with others building robots and figuring out how to make them do different tasks, like climbing stairs or opening lockers. It was really neat to see how our team progressed each week and the different things we could program our robots to do.
This slide shows students working on some of the projects we did this past year. In this corner is a picture of me building a robot that . . . . . . . . .
I really enjoyed learning from the ambassadors about engineering things, whether it be building the tallest structure out of marshmallows and spaghetti, racing the solar cars we built, or the various robots. We also enjoyed the cookies and treats they provided in our meetings.
West Des Moines Community Schools Technology 