Emily Progress Report

Product Description (who/what are you going to write about and what will the final deliverable
be/look like?):
I am writing about what STEAM Maker is, what the STEAM Maker Festival is, how STEAM
Maker came to be (along with all of their programs), and an excerpt on the Presidio Project and
STEAM Makers involvement.
(I might turn the Presidio Project and STEAM Maker involvement excerpt into its own article)

Article on STEAM Maker

[Include here your most recent draft for each article you are writing. Until accepted as the final
version, update any draft at least weekly]

Introducing A Revolution: STEAM Maker

Emily Everett

What is STEAM Maker?

STEAM Maker is a company located in San Diego, California dedicated to

bringing programs to schools that educate kids on Science, Technology, Engineering,
Art, and Mathematics (STEAM). Victor Ciccarelli and Brian Alvara, the business
partners who created STEAM Maker, are focused on making all of their programs fun
and engaging for students so that theyll come away inspired and eager to begin
exploring the world around them. Victor and Brian concentrate on providing extremely
budget friendly programs for schools that involve entire grades, instead of single
classrooms. Theyve created programs such as the Deep Space Explorer program, where
kids can learn web and app design, programming, and robotics, so that they can build
their own robot armies or even learn the basics of hacking! The Haberdashery program
is filled with crazy fun where kids can actually design their own clothes and costumes.
Giving kids the chance to learn the basics of sewing has never been more inspiring!

What is the STEAM Maker Festival?

The STEAM Maker Festival, an adaptation of the previous 2013 Maker Faire, is
held at the San Diego County Fair at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. The festival combines a
maker expo with S.T.E.A.M. education, and is described as, A celebration for all ages, a
gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers,
science clubs, authors, artists, students, and commercial exhibitors. The STEAM Maker
Festival offers schools around San Diego County the opportunity to attend, completely
free of charge. At the Festival, kids can participate in challenges put on by all of the
different exhibitors and even win prizes for their cool inventions!
Now how did STEAM Maker, and the STEAM Maker Festival come to be?

In 2013, at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, MAKE Media put on and sponsored a
Maker Faire. It was an undeniable success, but unfortunately there would be no 2014
Maker Faire due to fighting developers at MAKE Media. Victor and Brian wanted to
make sure that there was another fair that encompassed not only Maker ideals but
S.T.E.A.M. education as well. With no help from MAKE Media, no experience in putting
on a festival, and no time to prepare, they began to brainstorm. They wanted to make
the festival inspire ideas, students, and teachers alike. The goal was for all of the festival
attendees to ask themselves, How do I get this? How do I do that? How can I
implement this program at my school or work? They rented the Del Mar Fairgrounds in
December of 2014, and an astonishing 3,500 people attended! The evident success that
they had was so incredibly amazing compared to the 100 days they had to prepare for
the festival.
Due to the unquestionable success of the STEAM Maker Festival, Victor and
Brian began planning the next festival in early January of 2015. On February 4th, 2015,
Victor and Brian moved into a completely empty warehouse and began building all of
the rooms that would soon become home to their Bug Room, Victorian Robotics Room,
and their private Tool Room. The Bug Room focuses on Entomology, Biomimicry,
Forensics, Biology, and Chemistry. The Victorian Robotics room focuses on costume
innovation & invention, and robotics. And the private Workshop/Tool Room has
impressive machines like laser cutters, CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines,
3-D printers, and they even have a 3 Dimensional Camera!
Schools all around San Diego County started visiting the STEAM Maker
warehouse in March of 2015. Between March and May over ten schools had participated
in the community fairs at the warehouse. At this point, these schools were spending
upwards of four hundred dollars just for the travel costs of a single class of thirty
students. Victor and Brian put their heads together and decided that instead of the
schools travelling to the warehouse, they should travel to the schools and put on their
community fairs there. They told all of the schools that participated in their programs
that for the same money that they would spend on travelling, STEAM Maker could visit
their schools and put on programs for an entire grade instead of a single classroom.
Between May and June, Brian and Victor were able to introduce S.T.E.A.M. education to
over six times the amount of kids they had before! Instead of a single class, six classes
got the same S.T.E.A.M. enrichment. Visiting the schools was more successful, more
cost effective for schools, and best of all, more kids got involved in S.T.E.A.M. education.
It was great that all of these schools were able to host STEAM Maker for their
students, but Vic and Brian thought that they needed a more permanent solution to
introduce students to S.T.E.A.M. experiments. Schools needed a program for their
teachers so that they could learn how to do the same fun and engaging projects in their
classrooms year round. This is when Brian and Victor developed their Summer Teacher
Education programs. Over summer, teachers learn a base knowledge on all of STEAM
Makers programs and experiments so that they can implement them at their own
schools. They get the chance to test their field exercises on other teachers and staff
participating in the program, and through this they essentially create a fully crash tested
criteria for their students.