School leaders are always looking for ways to get members of their community—most commonly the parents of their students—involved with what kids are doing in the classroom. Today’s students are accomplishing so much especially when it comes to innovative learning and, too often, parents don’t get to truly see what they’re working on.
Coding tools, makerspace materials, and many other STEAM solutions are awesome at getting them to work with their hands and also activating their brains. When special education students see that they can use technology to accomplish a lot of the same things as all the rest of the students in the school, they gain a greater sense of inclusion, learn key skills, and more.
Plug-and-play accessibility is a pretty common buzzword-like term around the EdTech world. While leaders of almost every company claim to provide solutions that are easy to use right out of the box, not all of them deliver in the ways that the Robo Wunderkind system does. And, that mission starts with an age-appropriate introduction to robotics and STEM in preschool.
There are now two cool Expansion Packs for the STEAM Student Set—one focused on science, and one for focusing on math. You will need a littleBits STEAM Student Set in order to use the expansion packs since the learning activities are scaffolded for students in Grades 3-5 and help teachers build on prior experiences but neither pack comes with the power module.
If you are looking to implement littleBits into your classroom or library, the STEAM Student Set is the perfect introductory kit. It’s designed to be used by 1-3 students at a time, comes in packs of one, six, eight, or 10, and can support multiple groups and classrooms. It is ideal for students in Grades 3-8 and includes a bunch of teacher resources.
The MakeDo system is part of a simple cardboard construction kit line that features a bunch of reusable plastic tools. Although it is very simplistic and super low-tech, the ideas and creation possibilities when weaving MakeDo inventions into education are endless. Teachers could even inspire creative play, critical thinking, and problem solving while kids learn by doing.
For this week’s Eduporium Experiment, we’re playing around with the KEVA Contraptions Set, a pretty big box that’s not high-tech but still offers a high ceiling for STEM learning. KEVA has a few different kits available for students and teachers and the main features of each is the same. Keep reading to learn more about these low-tech STEAM tools.
Covering four specific areas (science, math, technology, and computer science), these kits help ensure students grasp key concepts through scaffolded and engaging activities! Keep reading to learn more about each of these expansion packs and why they’re a good option for any STEAM-loving, littleBits-using teacher.
It’s become increasingly common for schools to feature these types of spaces, which are designed to promote hands-on tinkering, breaking, collaboration, failure, problem solving, and creative invention using any assortment of MakerEd tools. In fab labs, students are free to create whatever they want in essentially any way that they want.
The original kit from Kano was just the beginning and now they offer different add-ons to help support deeper learning and even more fun. One of those add-ons is the Kano Pixel Kit, which empowers kids to invent and code dazzling lights in up to 16 million different colors. Keep reading to learn more about it!
