We hear from so many teachers that often they get out devices or STEAM equipment their students can’t handle it and lessons fall to pieces. Just like any classroom management system, explicit, clear routines are vital for ensuring you get the best out of tech in your classroom.
It is possible to deliver a STEAM project to students which kills creativity. Without significant and purposeful learning design STEAM learning can inhibit the very things we are trying to support students to develop. Here are five tidbits of thought to help you think critically about STEAM and creativity.
Integrating STEAM and robotics in the classroom can be expensive. Thankfully there are many low-cost options such as the BBC micro:bit which, with a little resourcefulness and tinkering can be a great tool to get started with. If you are new to the micro:bit be sure to check out this great overview. One issue with
A collection of UTB blog posts that discuss getting STEAM learning up and running in your classroom and a few more things to consider – tools, teacher as a learner and professional development.
Scratch 3.0 is available to try in beta version and it has some awesome new features. I’ll show you a couple of them in this video. If you’ve never used Scratch before or are an old pro you’ll be delighted by how much computational thinking can be developed in this user friendly system to design games, animations and stories.
Have you been engaging your students with STEM or STEAM projects and experiences but wondering how you can better focus the learning? Here are two simple ways you can maximise the learning outcomes for your students and they both begin at the planning phase.
The STEAM learning approach can look incredibly different from school to school. Here are some different approaches that we see in schools, and some positives and negatives about each approach.
Which low cost STEAM tools should we buy for our school in 2018?” I’ve got some thoughts about that, plus two tools I highly recommend.
For most teachers and educational leaders, the STEAM acronym conjures images of robots, computers and scientific equipment. There’s no doubt that these tools can often be found in a classroom engaged in STEAM learning. But it can be far too easy to be blinded by the ‘whats’ and ‘hows’, without considering your vision or ‘why.’ Here are 3 reasons why you should consider YOUR ‘why’ of STEAM before you think about anything else.
Don’t want to ready the whole article? Here’s a quick summary:
Your ‘why’ will drive your ‘whats’ and ‘how’s.’
Your purpose indicates your values and beliefs and this is what people are drawn to.
Your vision helps people see through the pain of change.
STEM and STEAM would be one of the biggest buzz words going around education at the moment. But there are also lots of misconceptions about what it is and how to implement it effectively. Here is a list of the 5 most commonly held myths I often hear about STEAM Learning.
When I was starting one of our STEAM workshops a few months back, I asked the teachers for any specific questions they had before we started. I always try to be honest when I don’t know the answer, and say “I actually don’t know about that one.” One of the teachers asked a question which received that answer. They asked “What does the E in STEAM actually look like in practice?”
Here is an example of a STEM challenge we ran at ISTE where we incorporated Sphero, design thinking, coding and a maker element. You can easily run a STEM challenge like this with your students. Here’s how
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