Spring / Printemps 2017 19 The made-up component is the welcoming environment of a local cof- fee shop for people working on electronics. This public space is often associated with chatting, reading, or editing an essay on a laptop. The rest of the story is based on real events from an IEEE workshop held at the Winnipeg Public Library. Opening a project box with small circuit boards connected through colorful wires can be a cause for concern in today’s hyper vigilant society. For this to change, STEM education needs to reach audiences beyond the classroom to not just teach new concepts, but also remove fears, demystify what engineers and scientists do, and, ultimately, en- courage a sense of experiential life-long learning. T his article shares the experience from a group of dedicated IEEE volunteers from the Winnipeg Section who have delivered over 60 workshops in embedded systems and other topics. These initiatives have significant impact in the community engaging high school students and teachers in STEM subjects, challenging university students to experiment outside the classroom environment, helping hobbyists work on their home automation projects, providing professional development activities for practitioners, and even bringing a grandfather closer to his grandchildren over a discussion on Arduinos. How it all began Historically, the IEEE Winnipeg Section had organized many embedded systems workshops with microprocessors going back to the 1980s when Prof. Witold Kinsner ran events at the first Microelectronics Centre in Western Canada. Later, during the 2000s, the emphasis was on Matlab for use in university labs and web applications for the trending World Wide Web phenomenon. For the most part, these events were usually ran as a seminar where a presenter would go through slides and live demonstrations, but the onus was on audience members to follow along. Many ideas were entertained to incorporate small development boards like those used in labs, but these did not materialize due to a combination of financial and logistical reasons. The lack of workshops did not prevent ambitious students like Mark Roy from experimenting as he built an LED Desktop Clock [2], but there was an untapped opportunity to engage more students in experiential learning opportunities. In the Winter of 2011, a group of University of Manitoba (UofM) students were working on assignments in the IEEE McNaughton Centre and stumbled upon the Texas Instruments MSP430 LaunchPad—a small development board that included software and cables to get started for only $4.30 [3]. They began reading about the board, sharing ideas for projects, and started filling out a form to order them. The buzz in the room was contagious and more people gathered around to learn about the potential from this exciting product. Even with all the excitement, there were some engineering students hesitant to get involved, as their experience with electronics was limited to the safe confines of the university labs. This combination of excitement and anxiety lead to the impromptu decision to organize a workshop. Within a span of four hours, a group of IEEE student members put in an order for more than $500 for development boards, breadboards, LEDs, resistors, and other components from various retailers around the world. Surprisingly, the breadboards became the most expensive component for the workshop when compared to the inexpensive development boards. In retrospect, the team should have called a meeting with the Student Branch executive and approved the budget expenses, however, as Grace Hopper wisely stated, sometimes “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.” Before wrapping up the activities for the day, they talked to the branch counsellor, Dr. Kinsner, who offered lots of advice on how to manage the logistics, but more importantly, emphasized many of the pedagogical elements to consider during the workshop. In particular, he emphasized the importance of not just doing, but understanding the principles behind it by linking to the theory taught in the classroom and challenging the audience with questions to entice them to build on the examples and try out things by themselves. By the end of that day, the UofM IEEE Student Branch was committed to its first hands-on embedded systems workshop. Since some of the parts were purchased from online overseas retailers, the dates for the workshop were not set until all the packages arrived. By then, the student branch executive had helped with many logistical elements The buzz in the room was contagious and more people gathered around to learn about the potential from this exciting product Café of 2025? Degrees Restaurant, U. of Manitoba (Feb. 4, 2017). Photo: David Lipnowski