While it’s tough to determine how much of each should be in this balance, it seems pretty clear that a combination of STEM skills and soft skills will vastly benefit today’s students once they enter the workforce. Even though many of tomorrow’s careers have not yet been invented or evolved yet, we have a pretty good idea of how to prepare kids for them.
The variety of educational technology on our store is always increasing. As new tech tools are brought into the education market, we’re working hard to make them available to educators in one easy-to-find place and at exclusive educator pricing. That’s not to say that our store is overflowing with every single EdTech product in the world.
As some teachers may know, the fall season means cooler weather, longer days, and all the EdTech conferences you can handle. Since we see so many educators at conferences during the months of October and November, we would not be surprised if you already knew that. And, yes, we are going to be at a lot of conferences in the coming months.
Among the changes that have taken place in education over the last few years, perhaps one of the largest and most significant ones has been the emergence of computer science. Some districts require students to take computer science courses and plenty of others make sure they get at least some exposure to it through electives or afterschool clubs.
This week, we’re taking the Eduporium Weekly in a slightly different direction and highlighting some of the best teacher blog posts that we’ve seen in the last year or two. We’re lucky to have (kind of) become a part of a fantastic online teacher community and love all of the content on sites like We Are Teachers, Edutopia, and more.
We talked about a lot of these skills in last week’s Eduporium Weekly and now we are going to be discussing some of the ways they might be put to use. Jobs of the future could range anywhere from drone pilot to virtual reality creator. We simply don’t know what exactly lies ahead, but can do some things to help prepare students for anything.
The current state of education is, of course, crucial to the future success of today’s students. They need innovative learning opportunities and creative challenges that will help them succeed down the road. What’s equally important in education is what’s on tap next. As a whole, education needs to be continuously evolving to best prepare students.
We say this all the time but a makerspace could be anything you want it to be. Seriously, there is no right or wrong way to design a makerspace. They now often pop up in classrooms, libraries, community centers, basements, closets, or wherever there’s room. The important thing is that students can work with their hands and create something meaningful.
While it may not be as bad as it was once thought to be, there will almost certainly be jobs lost to technology. While there will likely be jobs created in their place, however, there is no denying that technologies like artificial intelligence will have their place in our lives. They are already very much in it, in fact, with services like Siri and Amazon’s Alexa.
In some parts of the country, school has already started, but for those who return back right before or right after Labor Day, there is still a bit of time to do some EdTech research and discover some new tech tools to potentially bring into the classroom for the new year! So, here’s some suggestions for tech tools to use in many different areas of STEM.
