Eduporium Blog

Our newest Featured Educator is Patti Andreolas, an elementary teacher from Queens, NY. Patti has become involved in a variety of innovative projects with her students, helping them develop both hard and soft skills in the classroom. Whether it’s with physical or digital EdTech tools, she’s seen how hands-on learning can impact how students develop.

As always, we’re excited to see how the grant will help Bonni and her colleagues realize their collective mission of making greater progress in their STEM education programs. According to her, they’ve spent many years talking about how to evolve their STEM offerings and now find themselves in the right position to truly make it happen for their students.

If you’ll be in Atlanta for the GAETC, we encourage you to come by to learn more about our offerings or to just say hi. Among the happenings at our booth, we’ll display some educator favorites, including tech tools for the classroom, library, and makerspace and share the benefits of some of the other services we provide.

Whether it’s classroom teachers or challenges students themselves are facing, it’s a different environment when it comes to STEM instruction. Since the value of of these classes lies in their hands-on nature, it’s been quite a physical and mental adjustment trying to provide students with the experiences they need.

We were joined by iRobot’s Anna Elzer and Daniella Bonazzoli, who shared the iRobot story, including how, despite being known for the world-famous Roomba robot, every member of their organization is also committed to education. With help from the audience, they discussed the Root robots, the tech within them, creating SEL connections, and more.

Students can program the Sphero BOLT Robot to roll around, program its LED lights, program its sounds, and add loops to repeat programs. When programming the BOLT, they can use the various programming blocks in the Sphero Edu app. With these blocks, students can build programs for the BOLT to run and build their CS foundation at the same time.

Jacie is an author, consultant, and speaker from Pittsburgh, PA who’s done a lot to contribute to the betterment of STEM education. Whether it’s been creating PD resources for teachers or designing hands-on, engaging STEM lessons for students, she’s certainly helped extend the reach and impact of various programs.

In offering these grant opportunities, we’re looking for educators who have creative ideas for addressing these deficiencies. Whether your primary focus is on helping students overcome learning loss or boosting their social-emotional health, this award is designed to help teachers reclaim normalcy starting in the next few months.

An art-inspired platform, Storybird is designed to help students become better writers. One of the most important soft skills in today’s world, we know that communication is key in any future career. Since so much of today’s workforce requires a reliance on digital technologies, it’s easy to see why educators place such an emphasis on writing skills.

Lori wants to give her unique children an opportunity to partake in student-centered, accessible, and collaborative learning opportunities, which mesh perfectly with maker education. In fact, she’s even thinking about modeling this space after a college library or maker studio to really help create much more of a real-world feel for all of her students.