The team at Tech Will Save Us has created a unique line of STEAM learning tools—kits students can use to learn about a lot of different aspects of STEAM education. From conductivity and circuitry to coding and sewing, their increasing variety of options provides something for students with various interests to design and construct projects at home.
I am Amrapali Sharma and, as a longtime special education teacher, I often use an IEP (individualized education program) that I’d drawn up for each of my students, keeping in mind their current abilities, and including some set of reasonable goals we want them to work towards. Given what we’re now facing, a lot of that has gotten more challenging.
In my case, my classroom is the largest one in the school. It has anchor charts, word walls, posters—you name it! However, instead of doing a writing assignment, my students practice essential skills necessary to lifelong health. And, just because learning has largely moved online, it does not mean their physical education can stop.
Starting as an iOS-exclusive robot, Root has just recently implemented an online coding platform which can be accessed on most major devices! With iRobot’s online coding platform, students don’t even need the physical Root to practice coding! Keep reading if you want to learn more about how students can code at home with Root’s Virtual SimBot.
With everybody scrambling to find some sort of solution to get as much as they can from this experience and also reminding each other that distance learning does not have to be perfect, some things that students do in their classrooms are going to be fully eliminated or scaled back when it comes to remote learning. And, one of those is bound to be coding experiences.
Since it was released a few months back, we’ve gotten the chance the try out the littleBits Educator Starter Kit, which essentially serves as a trial kit for educators interested in STEAM learning with littleBits. It’s one single littleBits kit and doesn’t include much more than teachers and students need to get started inventing with littleBits.
As you know, everybody is doing their part to pull together resources for remote learning and that includes the companies whose STEM tools we sell on our store. Whether it’s at-home project ideas, best practices webinars, or tips for cleaning, we want to keep the learning going as best we can!
You have probably had resources for remote learning all but thrown at you over the last couple of weeks with the reality that has hit much of the K-12 education world. While there’s no specific formulas for creating successful distance learning lessons, there are at least strategies for teachers who’ve found themselves thrust into this new role without much time to prepare.
These days, it’s all about engagement. If you’re not getting students’ attention and keeping it, there’s a pretty good chance real learning is not happening. Like with adults, educators are now relying more and more on video (short videos to be more specific) in order to get and hold the attention of their students and Flipgrid can really help.
With Socrative, teachers can create quick quizzes and assessments that cover the key points of the material discussed in class. It’s a great way to leverage technology to check for understanding of key terms and concepts and it’s really easy to use! Both teachers and students can create an account and teachers can create questions very quickly.
