We have some news about the awarding of the first Eduporium EdTech grant of 2021! Jil DeMasi, an administrator with the Essex Regional Educational Services Commission in Fairfield, NJ, is the recipient of our latest award! Jil works with high school students in a juvenile detention center. She's helped create a program through which they can take part in some STEM experiences and develop some new skills. Dubbed ‘Success Beyond Your Circumstances,’ the program is designed to strongly impact students. It's been helping provide them with opportunities to learn new things and try new types of technology.
Jil is living out the title of her project while providing these students with the resources and opportunities they would have access to in a traditional educational setting. The way in which she’s chosen to go about facilitating these opportunities after receiving the grant award is by implementing new robotics tools. Jil sees this opportunity as a game changer for her students as she helps them discover hidden talents. Engineering, for example, might be a viable career path for some of them. And, the experiences they’ll get to have in the near future should certainly help that discovery along.
Reaching students through robotics.
By improving her robotics program, Jil is confident she’ll be able to help students build new hard and soft skills. The hands-on nature of their experiences, for example, should help boost their motivation. Plus, along the way, she believes they’ll be able to bolster some math, science, literacy, and technology skills, too. Jil also strives to build a strong foundation of social-emotional skills in her students. Using STEM tools like robotics kits naturally drives student collaboration. Jil is aiming to use the tools from the EdTech grant to promote the importance of teamwork, problem solving, communication, resiliency, and goal setting.
As part of the ‘Success Beyond Your Circumstances’ program, Jil has some specific ideas in mind for outcomes. Jil is committed to helping her students boost skills, like active participation, goal setting, design thinking, planning, and self-efficacy as well as increasing their tech skills. She also sees them being able to bolster their academic skills. Those include skills like understanding cause and effect, problem solving, math, literacy, and science proficiencies. The educational robotics tools that we will be providing her through the EdTech grant, for instance, will better set Jil's students up to gain some valuable real-world experiences.
Creating equitable programs for all students.
Jil’s mission to provide underserved students with equitable access to STEM education is certainly something we support. Her idea of using robotics to help students pursue a future in STEM is certainly worth the investment. Opening the eyes of her students to opportunities that could genuinely interest them and help them remain on the right path is part of her commitment to them. Knowing they are also capable of positively contributing to society is another factor. She sees learning academic skills as well as interpersonal skills as additional benefits from the grant for these students.
So, what are we providing to Jil and her students? We mentioned that they’ll be receiving some new robotics tools. As of now, we’ll be sending her some Sphero BOLT robots and a Hummingbird Bit kit. These tools will help students build STEAM skills, like coding and computational thinking, as well as the soft skills she’s passionate about helping her students develop. Most importantly, we congratulate Jil as our first EdTech grant recipient of 2021 and thank her for applying. If you would like to apply for our next grant award, the application is open until Feb. 20.