Since most kids think of the summertime as a chance to get away from learning, school and pretty much all academic-related activities, it’s sometimes tough to make sure that the months before school starts back up are meaningful. Sure, teachers can assign summer reading or projects, but there’s no way to be certain that students will really engage with the work—or if they’ll even actually do it. With so much focus on hands-on education and building STEM skills recently, a new idea has emerged to keep kids excited, energized and engaged during Summer Vacation—and that phenomenon is maker camps.
Summer STEM Camps that Meet Educational Standards
The biggest problems that developing students face over Summer Vacation are learning loss, which is brought on by a total removal from academic stimulation and abusing technology, which includes day-long scrolling through smartphones or tablets. While we want students using these tools during the school year, when the summer rolls around, they tend to disconnect from purposeful technology use completely. One way to bring them back to in is to have them enroll in a STEM camp. STEM camps are essentially purposeful extensions of classroom activities but with a much more carefree demeanor to embrace the time off during the summer. Children make use of hands-on learning, collaboration and meaningful technology to ensure that their minds stay sharp and active while they’re out of school.
STEM camps generally consist of a series of standards-aligned activities and can be orchestrated by districts, schools, or outside organizations. The idea is to have them be free of cost to the school system as well as parents, but still stimulate educational advancement. Activities can make use of materials that help in all areas, including virtual labs, engineering challenges and engaging projects. All of the above share the common goal of engaging students in STEM topics and connecting them to specific careers and skills all while in a much more relaxed environment. Summer maker camps are good because students have a lot more time in the day so they’re able to focus all their energy on one project, usually something where they can apply STEM concepts to solving a community-wide problem.
The goal for educators should be to build STEM literacy through their teaching every day. A STEM foundation is absolutely critical to ensure that children are able to meet the global challenges ahead of them in careers that might not even exist yet and we cannot afford to let that development wane during the summer months. Learning doesn’t stop when the final bell rings each day and that is just as true for summer vacation. STEM camps are able to maximize the time students spend outside of the classroom by keeping them inspired and helping them use innovative tools to inventively solve complex problems. With the opportunity to stay fresh during their time away from school, students and teachers should see a spike in sharpness when they return to the classroom in September thanks to continuous engagement at a local maker camp.
Coding Bootcamps Aim to Increase Affordability
Another kind of brain-stimulating camp for kids is what are known as coding bootcamps. Here, as the name suggests, children engage in various activities that represent learning to code and eventually progress to undertaking real coding challenges. Many of the coding bootcamps are put on by STEM companies that partner directly with schools to give students a place to hone their skills during the summer and even during the school year. These partnerships are great for educators and the students truly benefit since they’re able to have access to top-tier tools that their schools probably wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford.
Engineering jobs now rank in the top 10 in the country in terms of average base salary and, to be an engineer, you need to know coding inside and out. While many of these ‘bootcamps’ are created for college kids, they are starting to be adapted to cater to junior high and high school students as well. The goal is simple: use time kids have outside of school to help them build and develop skills that they will be able to use to acquire and excel at high-paying, 21st century jobs a few years down the road. Bootcamps even offer a bit more than summer camps in terms of student readiness. Kids can take advantage of a full training program that perfectly simulates the skills they need to know and then adds in the practical, hands-on experience.
Coding bootcamps expand early access to outcomes-oriented education by providing an interactive avenue for kids to get real experience. In learning actively, kids gain experiential expertise on their way to building modern, usable skills. Thanks to these high-quality, hands-on, real-world learning experiences, students are much better positioned to enjoy future success. The key thing in bootcamps is that the tools are constantly being updated to include the most recent and innovative technologies available. This is where kids will learn the skills and the trades in order to succeed in the high-demand career fields of the future. Summer is as good a time as any to check one out!
EdCamps Matter—And Here’s Why
Since they started sprouting up seven or eight years ago, EdCamps—places where children can extend their learning after school or during the summer—have become wildly popular. Like bootcamps, they are designed to combine beneficial learning with the relaxing atmosphere of summer vacation. EdCamps have grown into a movement and can now be found in almost every major city in the country as they continue to make a legitimate difference in the education of today’s students. Most parents and even teachers for that matter are not familiar with the benefits that EdCamps can provide during the summer months—or even what they are and that they exist! We’re here to change that.
EdCamps are created and driven entirely by actual educators, so all of the play-based learning that happens is strictly educational. At the camps, educators are looking to share the things that matter most to them—things that their students can truly benefit from in the 21st century, such as collaboration, teamwork and creativity. EdCamps can evoke student passion as well if not better than any in-school activity. In fact, nobody wants to force a child to attend an EdCamp—by making it more of a voluntary thing, teachers have discovered that they’re more likely to have to turn kids away as the camp gets too crowded than to have to beg the kids to come. When kids are engaged in projects that incorporate their passions and get to make learning happen rather than being fed the material, they’re going to enjoy it a whole lot more.
Instead of forcing children to be quiet, EdCamps actually encourage constant collaboration and sharing of ideas to improve the group dynamic and the overall effectiveness of the project. These kinds of camps tend to throw out the traditional and eliminate all instances of teachers ‘talking at’ students. Conversations lead to innovations and that’s what summer EdCamps are there to provide. These informal conversations have been known to spark brilliant opportunities for invention. Perhaps most importantly, EdCamps are low-stress environments where children feel no pressure of passing or failing as they can only learn from their mistakes. When kids aren’t afraid of experiencing failure, it opens up a whole new realm of creative possibilities over the summer.
Maker Camps Lead to Early Success
It’s amazing what a little bit of inspiration can do. Just ask the 13-year-old CEO of Strikey Sensors, Nick Anglin. Like many of today’s students, Nick would often find himself bored with the repetition and lack of challenges throughout the school day. He said he hated school and rarely paid any attention in class or did any of his homework. It took a summer Maker Camp to help Nick realize that he had a serious interest in technology and some serious skills for creation. His curiosity, when purposefully channeled in the right direction, has led to huge things already for this innovative CEO.
Nick’s time spent at a local maker camp led to him undertaking a project that he dreamed up based on one of his top interests: baseball. He developed a technology called Strikey Sensors, a training tool that helps pitchers tell if they have thrown a strike and how to improve their game using laser sensors. Realizing the potential in the idea, patents were applied for and Nick ultimately became the CEO of the company—at age 13. Since some kids just learn differently or turn off at the idea of learning, maker camps are a pretty ingenious solution to get them working with their hands in a way that doesn’t feel like work. Rather, they’re a carefree place for kids to try, tinker and creatively express their interests and skills.
Maker camps like the one Nick attended and other STEM-inspired summer programs empower K-12 students of all ages to create ideas and inventions born from artistic inspiration. They help children find the entrepreneurial potential that’s buried deep inside each one of them and channel it into something positive for themselves and the whole community. A summer spent at a maker camp helps kids try learning in a different way and facilitates a much more meaningful vacation than playing video games and jumping in the pool. When they attend and actively participate, maker camps can give kids more opportunities to develop creative confidence and an interest in STEM and hands-on learning by constantly creating something unique!
How the Summer EdCamp Movement Went Viral
Making has always been a way to engage kids and the modern school day, unfortunately, just does not allow for enough of it. Since teachers are forced to meet a certain amount of requirements every year, the opportunity is lost for kids to be able to try out Arduino's, robotics and DIY kits in the classroom. Camps, of course, are places where this is possible since it’s Summer Vacation and there are no educational guidelines to adhere to. It’s a whole lot easier to get kids excited about STEM when it’s right in their faces as opposed to something they’re being forced to read from a 40-year-old book. What started as an experiment to try to keep kids somewhat sharp has grown into a national movement—one that children continually look forward to experiencing.
EdCamps and Maker Camps serve as a place for kids to expand their DIY skills and connect with children who have a similar interest for making things work. Since many schools, unfortunately, do not have sustainable programs like these, many kids try to make the most out of their summer experiences. To try to alleviate this problem, many maker camps have extended their operations and set up shops as afterschool programs as well, allowing kids to continue to receive the hands-on opportunities they crave. When the educational system fails to truly engage students during the school day, it’s camps like these, which were once designed for summer, that re-engage them and do so meaningfully and effectively.
One reason that maker camps are effective is due to the teacher guidance that students receive. These teachers have been there before and understand the importance of kids making to make learning meaningful. Teachers typically lead projects and guide kids to exactly where they need to be. Camps also survive on their ability to take inexpensive and often discarded materials from around the house or the building and challenge kids to turn them into something significant and memorable and it’s definitely working. Every summer, tens of thousands of children enroll in maker camps and explore all angles of tinkering, problem solving and creative construction. The summertime is no longer a roadblock in intellectual development—it’s an incredibly useful couple of months in which kids can truly bring learning alive.
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