When it comes to STEM in 21st century teaching and learning, there are few limits to what students can accomplish. Besides helping boost their overall engagement and enjoyment levels in the here and now, access to STEM learning and opportunities to build real-world skills often significantly improve how students prepare for the future. Whether it's with introducing them to coding in the early grades, engineering in their middle years, or the benefits of more complex technologies, like virtual reality or artificial intelligence, in high school, STEM education is a crucial piece of student development. With such huge potential and importance, however, this instruction requires planning, guidance, and equipment. And, as the economy keeps trending toward STEM-dominated professions and opportunities, exposure to these areas is vital. Thankfully, there are few restrictions to leading effective STEM lessons.
Our mission is helping educators develop students who are truly Future Ready and helping them facilitate relevant learning is how. To that end, we offer a robust online store filled with the latest STEM solutions. But, beyond that, we love creating and sharing impactful content to help enhance how educators use these tools in instruction. In this section of our blog, you'll find countless posts on trending STEM topics, how-to articles, many recommendations for classroom solutions and projects, industry updates, connections between STEAM tools and the future, and a lot more. We are also extremely committed to closing certain gaps and increasing equity in STEM education. As such, a lot of this content contains context for advancing inclusive opportunities for all kids. We encourage you to search through the posts to find something relevant for you. And, if there's any topics we've missed, let us know.
A tool built to amplify both student productivity and retention, ideamapper essentially serves as a visual mind mapping tool by combining the practice of mind mapping with word processing. It’s designed to help your students establish visual connections among all the most crucial curricular concepts and pieces of information they need to know in all areas of the curriculum.
With help from our vendor partners, we’ve been working hard to make sure educators know how to adapt the tech tools they consistently rely on in the classroom into a home learning solution. Each one is different, but the opportunities to include STEM experiences, like coding, engineering, and design, in distance learning are there.
Like so many teachers, students, parents, and administrators, we’re uncertain about what this school year will bring, especially as school doors slowly start to reopen. Whether learning is going to be taking place in person, at home, or as part of a hybrid model, we know that we couldn’t let STEM learning opportunities fall by the wayside.
Like fellow members of the education world, we’ve realized there’s a bit more to educating the whole child than simply ensuring they have a strong foundational background in STEM. As the school year begins, STEM remains important, but we’re also committed to ensuring students have the chance to focus on social-emotional restoration.
In our newest Eduporium Featured Educator interview, we hear from April Leonard, who serves the students of the Mississippi Heights Elementary school in the Sauk Rapids-Rice School District. She’s done a lot with coding, including using the Dash and Dot and LEGO WeDo with goals of welcoming 1,000 students to a common makerspace in the future.
Despite so much uncertainty, there’s one thing we know for sure: We don’t want students to veer off course in terms of STEM and real-world skills development, so we’ve been working on creating custom STEAM kits that can be used to help educators teach key topics, allow students to work independently, and are conducive to different environments.
Tricia has worked with a number of EdTech tools and given the students she coaches a ton of positive experiences. We’re excited to share Tricia’s story and hopefully inspire more educators to take chances with new tech in the classroom and unlock new learning opportunities with technology! Keep reading to learn more!
The five newest Wonder Workshop bundles now all include licenses for their learning management system, Class Connect, access to their virtual Dash Robot, and curriculum library. Each comes with a corresponding number of accessories and robots and more! Whether in person or remote, these new bundles are perfect to integrate into CS education
We were fortunate to sponsor a Virtual Summit session led by fourth grade teacher, Jasmine Saab, and give away a Wonder Starter Pack to one lucky attendee! That attendee would end up being Imani Malaika-Mehta, who is the executive director of the KC Creators Club in Kansas City, and put this post together about her experiences with teaching STEM.
We spoke with Albert Lewis! Albert works with students in the 4-H Youth Development Program as part of the University of Maryland Extension in Baltimore City. He loves using STEM to connect with the students he works with and, even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, he’s helped them find creative ways of using technology in their learning.
