Eduporium Partners with After-School Organization to Create STEM Kits and Curriculum
WATERTOWN, Mass. (PRWEB) July 25, 2018 -- For much of the past year, the team at Eduporium has been working very closely with a major afterschool organization to create content, kits, and STEM experiences for students. This organization was derived from one of the oldest and most prominent organizations for children in the country. Eduporium first partnered with them two years ago and, after working together for one year, was asked to return for a second year and provide twice as much content and STEM technology.
Beginning last summer, the Eduporium team started drafting content for these children. The premise is that the camp-like atmosphere they’re working in as part of this afterschool program should have a greater STEM focus since that is so relevant to their futures. So, about a year ago, Eduporium pitched ideas for four areas of content – all for different grade levels and all evolving around one central technology, including the Edison Robot, mBot, littleBits Rule Your Room Kit, and a NooElec Software Defined Radio (SDR).
After working with this organization last summer, the plans were finalized to develop six 1-hour lessons using each of these four tech tools. From there, Eduporium started developing the content, which includes a bunch of sections and a great amount of educational material for the kids to learn. Included in each packet is an overview of the 6-week program, summaries for every meeting, helpful information for instructors, background information for the kids, lists of materials they would need for each project, activity overviews, engaging questions, safety recommendations, and step-by-step instructions for carrying out some truly innovative STEM experiments. The four final versions for each product wound up being about 50 pages long.
Though it took a while for Eduporium to draft, revise, and finalize all of the activities for the program, the end result was a bolstered partnership and opportunity to impact the lives of children. After getting started on this year’s content around Labor Day 2017, the Eduporium team completed the final versions in April 2018. They based their efforts around weekly phone calls with the program’s leader and used that direct feedback to create the best product possible.
The ultimate goal of Eduporium’s involvement in the program is to create learning experiences that allow students to practice real-world STEM skills, like coding, collaboration, engineering, and problem solving. That’s why they chose to use the Edison, mBot, Rule Your Room Kit, and NooElec SDR receiver. Each of these technologies provide multiple entry points for STEM and allow students to fine tune a number of different 21st century skills.
The program is broken up into three age groups: Elementary school, middle school, and high school. For this year’s content, Eduporium ultimately provided two sets of six weeks’ worth of curricula on the littleBits Rule Your Room Kit and Edison Robot for elementary aged students. The middle school students are going to be exploring six weeks of content around the mBot and high school students will be working with the NooElec Software Defined Radio for six weeks. Last year, Eduporium took part in the same program and created content around the Ozobot for elementary students, a drone for middle school students, and the Internet of Things (IoT), leveraging Raspberry Pi for high school students.
It’s not just the EdTech product in the kits, though. For example, The Intro to Electronics kits, which are based around the Rule Your Room Kit, each contained two littleBits Rule Your Room kits, two pieces of string, two pairs of scissors, multiple printouts, markers, and tape. It wasn’t easy for them to get all the boxes packed either (there were 600 Rule Your Room boxes total), especially as space in the Eduporium office started to quickly fill up with small boxes and overpack boxes.
At around 50 pages per product with four products and around 900 kits in total, Eduporium also delivered on the content students will be using as part of this program! They created two versions of each set of activities – one for the students to read along with while they’re doing the projects and one for their leaders to have to direct them (with tons of hints so the leader is well ahead of the kids).
Eduporium recently got all of the technology kits shipped out from their office in Watertown, Ma. and they are on their way to a bunch of different places. The shipment headed to a central location, where officials from the organization will then be shipping them on to programs all over the country!
The team at Eduporium has been incredibly excited to have this opportunity and they love the fact that children will be using new technology to invent, explore, and innovate. As their work on this year’s program wraps up, they are already looking ahead to next year and developing some brand-new content for children while working with this same organization.
If you are part of an afterschool or in-school program and looking for some new ways to use STEM technology with students, the folks at Eduporium would love to hear from you! They can provide the EdTech products (their store has over 900), content for the projects, or any advice you might need to assure a successful program.
Anyone who is interested may send an email to partner(at)eduporium(dot)com, give them a call at 1 (877) 252-0001, or visit their website for more information!
Ahmed Shareb, Eduporium, https://www.eduporium.com/, +1 6176007230, [email protected]
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