YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Alaina Klingensmith isn’t part of who would be considered the traditional target audience for Oh Wow! The Roger & Gloria Jones Children’s Center for Science & Technology.
Now a high school freshman, she said she was about 6 years old the last time she was at Oh Wow.
“A lot has changed,” Klingensmith said. “It doesn’t look quite the same as it did before.”
Klingensmith, whose home school is Lakeview High School, was part of a group of students from Trumbull Career & Technical Center who were invited Tuesday morning to try out the equipment in the new America Makes 3D Printing Lab, part of Oh Wow’s expansion onto the second floor of the former McCrory Building.
“There’s a lot of opportunities in this,” said Alayna Langowski, another freshman from TCTC. Her home school is Bristol High School. Like Klingensmith, she said she was probably about 6 when she last visited Oh Wow.
Oh Wow has been bringing in students of various age groups to check out the second-floor space before it officially opens to the public April 16. TCTC brought 15 students from its Early Innovators Academy, a STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – academy that exposes ninth and 10th graders to programs they could participate in in 11th and 12th grades.
The students were doing a trial run Tuesday with some of the programming that will be offered now that Oh Wow has expanded to appeal to an older demographic than its traditional audience. The second floor also has a new advanced technology hub, as well as a temporary maze exhibit installed last month by California-based A-Maze-D.
The purpose of the expansion is “to offer something fresh and new to all of our visitors,” as well as “to increase our bandwidth a little bit and hopefully reach some higher age range,” said Katie DeToro, Oh Wow’s executive director.
“Continuing to invest not only in downtown, in our building, but also invest in the education of our community is of the utmost importance, especially when we’re talking about workforce development and offering activities and hands-on programming that gets kids excited about the opportunities that exist right here in the Mahoning Valley, especially in additive manufacturing,” she said.
The activity planned Tuesday for the Early Innovators Academy involved an adaptation of the 3D printing lab’s “dizzy doodler” activity, said Katy Daniel, Oh Wow’s director of education. The students were to design and print a housing system for the markers, motor and battery pack it uses.
Students in the Early Innovators Academy have had pre-engineering and manufacturing courses and participate in biomedical, plant and horticulture courses, said Marissa Brown, a career and technical education teacher with the academy and a member of Oh Wow’s board.
“It’s just a great opportunity for kids who are interested in project-based learning, STEM-based learning and being creative and collaborative,” Brown said.
“From a young age, I’ve always been really interested in how programs on computers work,” Shawn Sudol said. A sophomore whose home school is Howland High School, Sudol said he last visited Oh Wow when he was “too young to remember” but participates every year in Silly Science Sunday, Oh Wow’s annual outdoor STEM festival. He participates with Howland’s robotics team.
He said he was challenged in the digital design phase of the project because he didn’t have much time for it. “I was really pushed to get what I could and get something good out in the time allotted,” he said.
Daniel said she appreciated the feedback provided by the TCTC students. One of the issues they pointed out was that the laptop computers they were using at Oh Wow lacked mouses.
“We all had touch pads on the computers, and they’re used to designing with mouses,” she said. “It’s one of the things you don’t really think about until you’re trying to do it.”
Pictured at top: Clockwise from left are Miya Moore from Hubbard High School; Maddison Pineda from Bristol High School; and Samantha Miller and Olivia Miller from Southington High School.