The Museum celebrated Massachusetts STEM Week in with the return of its in-person CreatedBy Festival and the hosting of two virtual live events each weekday as a part of the Festival. Over a thousand visitors attended the in-person showcase of STEAM inspiration and creativity sponsored by Mathworks and Autodesk. Visitors were able to experience augmented reality through Tinkercad and MathTalk, hands-on geometry activities with the Russian School of Math, make “shrinky dinks” with Einstein’s Workshop, celebrate National Chemistry Week through a variety of hands-on chemistry experiments, create LED light art/photography, learn all about 3D scanning and printing with Brandeis Maker Lab, meet the creators of the Battebots robot and “Ribbot” the robot itself, and interact with New England FIRST Robotics teams and their robots.

Virtual live events were broadcast directly into classrooms, as well as households. More than 400 students registered across all events, some of whom attended many or all the live virtual events. During these events, students could remotely learn to make a virtual interactive pet with Scratch, create 3D models with Tinkercad and Blocks CAD, ask iRobot employees about when robots will take over the planet, tour ModVic’s STEAM punk studio, decide which commands to give LEGO Mindstorms robots with Einstein’s Workshop, solve math and logic mysteries using narrative-based challenges with Russian School of Math, build gliders with Girlstart, and learn about the technology used in archeology with Brandeis Maker Lab.