Boston’s world-famous Museum of Science is in the process of redesigning its famed Blue Wing and hosted a dinner Monday night to announce new plans for how they will enhance STEM learning for a broader audience. Among the highlights of the Putting Your Tech Foot Forward event, were a distinguished panel of speakers, which included David Dockerman, Adrian Melia, and John Richards from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and an interactive Technology Petting Zoo hosted by Eduporium.
At this invite-only event, some of the museum’s top patrons, overseers, and brightest minds in the Boston area were treated to an insightful panel discussion on how technology can enhance STEM education and how the project in the Blue Wing will align with this effort. Right now, it’s imperative that children and people of all ages are able to leverage technology to think critically, assess problems, and truly learn how to learn.
Among the new exhibits in the Blue Wing will be what the museum refers to as “Tech And You,” and “Tech Studio,” both of which are designed to bring museum goers closer to technology. During the transformation over the next 10 years, these new spaces will serve as digitally immersive environments that transport people into a new world using mixed reality. They are going to use technology to create iterative learning within the museum, a place where the project’s leaders believe parents and children should be able to experience innovation and grow together.
Members of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education were also on hand and discussed how the jobs that kids will be entering are increasingly volatile due to the constantly changing abilities of technology and how the upgrades to the Blue Wing will hopefully inspire everyone to chase learning that’s both more personal and more powerful. Tools like virtual reality will allow both the Museum of Science and educators in classrooms to bring the outside in for their students.
In the new Blue Wing, there will be opportunities for immersion like many people have never seen. As this shift gains steam, the same kind of transition—they believe—will begin happening in schools. And, that’s where Eduporium comes in. At Eduporium, we share the belief that the power of technology has the potential to enhance STEM and better prepare students for the 21st century—right now.
Eduporium co-founder and CEO, Rick Fredkin, of Brookline, Mass. followed the panel on the main stage and discussed how his company is working with teachers to get them the technology tools they need to create this kind of learning. After over 20 years in the technology field, Fredkin has seen the transformative power of technology first hand. In fact, it gave him the career he has today.
What it comes down to is that technology gives everybody the ability to be more creative in how they approach their day-to-day lives, their solving of increasingly challenging problems, and the way in which they connect with others and the world around them. Whether it’s in a museum or a school, having access to natural learning is going to be the key to creating Future Ready innovators out of today’s kids.
Ten years from now, as we struggle to predict the abilities of technology, the new Blue Wing will be complete and will feature the kind of technologies that the Museum of Science and Eduporium know will lead to more accomplishments than ever before. While classrooms are a place where kids are expected to know the answer, museums promote trial and error, which both of these innovative organizations want students to be a part of on a regular basis. For more highlights from Putting Your Tech Foot Forward, click here.