Calumet City youths pitch in for project to help Whiting mascot [link to article]
Chicago Tribune Daily Southtown
PUBLISHED: August 5, 2024 at 3:12 p.m.
A group of young people have been using a variety of tools at the Calumet City Public Library to reach their goals, and having a ball while they were at it.
Part of an activity rooted in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the youths now are poised to put the skills they’ve learned to use after being recruited to help Reggy the Purple Party Dude at the Mascot Hall of Fame in Whiting, Indiana.
“At this age, the kids like to have an underlying motivation that’s not just, ‘I want to learn,’ so the story is to help this mascot build a sports course,” said Amanda Thompson, CEO of Explore Interactive, an organization based at Purdue University that developed and is piloting the program in collaboration with MindLabs and the nonprofit Act Now Illinois.
As she worked to develop her portion of the course, Brianna Chrusfield, 12, was intrigued by the process of getting a small ball into a net using various materials on her tablet computer, such as a wheel, screw, pulley and lever.
I learned that I can do different materials to try to get the ball in the side of the net,” said Brianna, who lives in Calumet City with her family. “I can be very creative with it. I already started a little something of my own to get the ball inside the goal. I just think it’s very cool.”
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