It's time to announce the recipient of Eduporium's $500 EdTech grant for the month of March. And, the winner is...Jacqueline Firster, a makerspace manager and STEM teacher from Arlington Public Schools in Virginia. Jacqueline will use her award to create a mobile makerspace and empower fellow educators to enrich PBL opportunities for students! Among the goals she has for using her new technology are connecting literature to STEM and encouraging her students to solve real-world problems together!
As a STEM specialist, Jacqueline works with over 700 students from all K-12 grades and has helped create a mobile makerspace at one of her district’s Title I schools. Since creating the space a few years ago, she has seen firsthand how the opportunity to take part in MakerEd has transformed learning outcomes and excitement for her students. For that reason, she has made it her goal to ensure the curriculum they use offers plenty of hands-on learning and gives her and other educators the chance to teach key concepts, like robotics, circuitry, and programming in a meaningful way.
“I can’t wait to tell everybody at the school that they will be receiving this awesome opportunity for their building,” Jacqueline said after learning she'll receive the award. “It will really change their instructional practice in a positive way to have these resources available to them!”
As part of her award, Jacqueline is going to be receiving some MakeDo kits, Snap Circuits kits, KEVA Planks kits, and accessories to use with the Ozobot and Sphero robots she already has! She's very excited to start training other teachers in the school on how to use these technologies in their daily instruction and get everyone excited about the possibilities—something we're thrilled to be able to help her accomplish! Jacqueline is really focused on project-based learning and wants to empower all the other educators she works with to use new technology effectively as well.
As part of her project-based teaching, Jacqueline will be using these various technologies to illustrate cool concepts, like alternative energy and alternative transportation. She’s also going to be working with other teachers to teach them how to integrate tools like Sphero and Ozobot into their curricula, how to create an elementary makerspace, and how to connect literature to STEM activities! If successful, Jacqueline will then be stretching these ideas from one school to the entire district! Jacqueline’s grant application was very inspiring and, as we say every month, we were very much impressed by the ideas she has for integrating STEM tools into her instruction and we’re very excited to be able to help her accomplish her goals!
Using the materials she’ll be receiving from us, Jacqueline is excited to be able to provide her students with more enriched PBL experiences. All the materials will be transported from place to place on their mobile maker cart and Jacqueline will be able to train teachers in different locations, which is very important to her. Eventually, she hopes to establish a schoolwide committee to develop a common approach in regards to design thinking, PBL, and student feedback among the school’s teachers. With her foundation in place, we can’t wait to see what Jacqueline and her students are able to accomplish with these new tech tools and how their makerspace evolves over the next couple of months and years!
If you are interested in applying for our EdTech grant award for the month of April, the application is now open! You can find it in the footer of our website and it will be open to all educators until April 20. If you’ve never applied for a grant, we encourage you to take the leap and if you’ve applied for ours in the past and were not selected, we hope you’ll apply again! And, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram to keep up with all the latest EdTech, STEM, and MakerEd news from us!