Back in February, we launched a unique pilot program in collaboration with the Highlander Institute and six Rhode Island educators. The program is designed to prepare students in these classrooms to present at the Blended and Personalized Learning Conference on April 7 in Providence, which Highlander has played a huge part in organizing. After six weeks of using various STEM tools in their everyday learning experiences, students will be in the spotlight in less than two weeks, so we thought we'd check in and see how things have been going!
Last Friday, we visited six different elementary school classrooms, where students were using different STEM tools. The day began in Julie Romano's classroom as her fifth graders were working on creating scenes for stop motion animation with Stikbots, building a conductive guitar with the Makey Makey GO and writing programs for the Edison Robot, (above, left). From there, we traveled to Brown Ave Elementary School to check in with Melanie Martino and her fifth graders, who were shooting their own Stikbot scenes (above, right). One student even created a very impressive trip through US history as the backdrop for her stop motion and another was working to perfect the EdBuilder with the EdCreate Kit!
The day continued at Winsor Hill Elementary, where we visited the fifth grade classrooms of Dionna Gajdowski and Gabrielle Harwood and found even more student collaboration. With enough students to fill two classrooms, these kids were color coding with the Ozobot (above, left), testing the conductivity of cucumbers with the Makey Makey GO (above, right), and working with Circuit Stickers. It was fantastic to see the careful planning and attention to detail going into their designs as students worked together to create a challenging course for their Ozobot's!
To cap off the afternoon, we made our way to Garden City Elementary and met up with Heather Breton and her second graders. Her students had already created a maze for their Sphero's to navigate and were working on perfecting the codes to get it through (above, left). She was also very busy helping students fine tune their own stop motion projects with Stikbots, which looked very impressive! The final stop was at Hampden Meadows Elementary school in the fourth grade classroom of Dayna Safran. Some of her students were creating programs for their Edison Robots while others were designing arenas for their Ozobot's to navigate and one group worked diligently to engineer an inventive design with E-Blox (above, right).
Students in Miss Safran's class were also busy during the entire visit building and programming with Cubelets. Although we were unable to provide the schools with tablets, the students were able to easily integrate the magnetic robots with the devices they already had. One group in particular was especially intrigued by Cubelets, spending much of the visit discovering new ways to program with it. At one point, the structure they built was continuously traveling around one student while the other controlled it from the tablet. Thanks to the Bluetooth block in the Cubelets kit donated by Modular Robotics (above), these students have been engineering, programming, and having a blast exploring the creative potential of technology in the classroom!
It was fantastic to see students working together with such engaging tools and we extend a sincere thank you to our partners who donated to this program! We also encourage any educators in the area to attend the Blended and Personalized Learning Conference in Providence on April 7. To continue following along with the progress of our pilot program, check out the #EHP2018 hashtag on Twitter!