We’re excited to introduce our community to another "Eduporium Featured Educator.” Each month, we’re highlighting the work of an educator who is effectively using EdTech to empower his or her students with greater learning opportunities. We love being able to share their stories and their work with you and hope this series continues to give other educators encouragement to try something new in the classroom! This month, we’re featuring Amanda Callahan-Mims, a STEM Lab Teacher from Tennessee, who led an amazing repurposing of a school bus into a STEAM space with the help of Eduporium’s monthly grant program!
Amanda Callahan-Mims
STEM Lab Teacher, Spring Hill Elementary School, Knoxville, TN
Q&A:
What have you done with the technology you received through the Eduporium grant?
We have been using the Cue Robot to learn angles (degrees of turn, like a 45-degree turn and 90-degree turn) to estimate distance (each block is 12 inches) then convert these measurements from Imperial to standard (12 inches is 30.48 cm), so three floor blocks is 36 inches or 91 cm. The students use the Cue to code on the fly as I call out directional changes, distances, and measurements that need converting to practice these skills! The students love this and all gather around like it's a race. They sit on the edge of their seats cheering, biting their nails, and waiting to see who will be named the fastest coder!
What advice would you give to educators just starting out with implementing EdTech?
Don't be afraid to try out new things! Go ahead and order that thing you wish you had. Take it home, play with it. Google it. Read about it. Figure it out and then introduce your students to it! Or, be bold and learn how to do it with the students!
What interests you most about Eduporium?
I love that Eduporium supports teachers by offering the EdTech Grant every month. Eduporium also offers a bundling service through which teachers can request to have different EdTech items bundled together to save. My favorite thing though is the Educator Discount that’s available when ordering STEM tools from them!
Thank you to Amanda for speaking with us! If you know of an educator who is doing exciting things with EdTech, feel free to recommend them (or yourself!) for us to feature next by applying here! Find out more about how Eduporium can help revamp your classroom, library, or makerspace by exploring our site. Sign up as an educator and start saving with your discount. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for more.