STEM Education in Schools: What Are the Benefits?
The implementation of STEM Education in Schools has become a significant trend to combat today’s global challenges through the combination of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Countries around the world are recognizing the importance of incorporating STEM Education in Schools to equip tomorrow’s workforce with 21st century skills that are in high demand and will be crucial for the future. STEM Education can help schools run more efficiently while improving their overall student outcomes. Whether you lead a school or work with students there, it’s important to know how implementing STEM Education can benefit your program. In this blog post, we will provide you insights on what implementing STEM Education means and potential benefits of doing so.
What is STEM Education?
STEM Education is a type of education that emphasizes the skills needed to create and make the things of the 21st century. These skills include problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration.STEM Education has been known as the “new literacy” because it bridges the gap between traditional literacy (reading and writing) and 21st century skills.The growing demand for STEM skills has led to countries offering incentives to those who teach and provide resources for those who want to learn them.
Why is STEM Education Important?
STEM Education is where the future of work is headed. The world is quickly moving towards a more automated and digital future. Machines are becoming more intelligent, even surpassing human cognition. In order to compete in this automated world, we need to provide our future workforce with the skills that are relevant. STEM Education is crucial in this changing future.The automation of industries such as healthcare and transportation has increased the demand for skilled workers. At the same time, the skills needed to compete in these industries are changing. New knowledge, skills, and abilities are required to navigate in the digital world. STEM Education can help prepare students for this transition by teaching them critical thinking and problem-solving skills that are vital in the workplace.
How to Implement STEM Education in Schools?
STEM Education is not just about assigning students to a lab and watching them learn while they work. It’s also about preparing them with the resources they need to succeed. This includes identifying student needs and providing the right skills and resources to support those needs.STEM education involves a partnership between schools and local businesses. This partnership can help schools incorporate STEM education with less disruption to daily operations. Topics such as computer programming or robotics can be introduced in a way that doesn’t disrupt the regular school day and doesn’t require a massive investment.
Example of a School that has incorporated STEM education
The majority of the assets of a school district are tied to a set of buildings. For example, a majority of the district’s funds are tied to the school’s building. To maximize the value of these assets, the district may want to renovate or replace the existing school, even though many factors indicate that the district would benefit from constructing a new school.When the district decides to renovate the existing school, it might initially examine the costs involved in renovating the existing building. However, that decision process is incomplete because it ignores the potential benefits of a new school.When the district decides on a renovation, it might be too late to incorporate STEM education. However, the district might be able to incorporate STEM education in its new school construction.
Summary
STEM Education is important because it offers students a variety of skills that will help them compete in the modern workforce. These skills include problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration. To implement STEM Education, schools can adapt to the changing needs of their students and provide the necessary resources to support them. The majority of assets of a school district are tied to a set of buildings, such as a school’s building. When the district decides to renovate the existing school, it might initially examine the costs involved in renovating the existing building. However, that decision process is incomplete because it ignores the potential benefits of a new school. When the district decides on a renovation, it might be too late to incorporate STEM education into a new school. However, the district might be able to incorporate STEM education into its new school construction.
How to make science fun and accessible
STEM, and a knowledge of its fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), has shaped and aided the development of the everyday life of humans. The expansion of our knowledge of science has led to a better understanding of the world.
Ensuring that children understand basic scientific concepts is vital for the development of their awareness of the world around them. It is also important for their cognitive development and helps improve their problem-solving skills. By making science accessible to kids, we can help them develop important life skills, which will help them communicate, observe, and understand the world better.
Introducing children to science can feel like a daunting task, but it does not have to be!
Children have an inquisitive nature and letting them have fun as they learn about science is an excellent way of getting them to engage. Science can be easily accessible with the help of the Twin Science App and by trying out easy experiments at home!
The importance of learning about science
Science is everywhere in the world. Learning about science means learning about how and why things function the way they do. In order to understand the behaviour of the world, and the structures that make and surround us, one must understand science. Scientific research has led to the improvement of the quality of life. With improvements in communication, travel and medicine, the expansion of scientific knowledge has aided humans in a multitude of ways. This is a key reason why we must educate children, the scientists, and leaders of the future, about these concepts of biology, chemistry, and physics, as it is highly beneficial for them to understand the nature of the world they live in.
A knowledge of science flourishes the minds of children, and moulds them into critical thinkers. Children with science experience and knowledge become able to form their own opinions on what they observe. Science enables kids to gather the skills they need to sense problems and tackle them on their own.
How can science be fun?
A science lesson may connote a complicated and boring lecture, but that does not have to be the case. Learning about science can be fun and enticing! Science can be learned outside of a school setting, where we tend to have more liberties, and can therefore have as much fun as we like.
Children learn best when they can see and feel what’s going on! Thus, it is highly profitable to introduce science to kids by trying out simple experiments at home. Children are more likely to be engaged if they can experience the subject hands-on. In fact, according to the modality effect of the cognitive load theory, information is understood and retained better when it is provided both visually and auditorily. Whether it be through a purchased science kit, or simply by using the items you have at home, if children can see their curiosity come to life, they will not only comprehend the idea better, but will also enjoy the topic and crave to learn more! This is also a great way to introduce science as a fun topic.
How to make science fun and accessible
Research shows that if children have fun while learning, then they will absorb information better. Having fun while learning also encourages the child to learn more, as it associates the subject with an enjoyable experience. By incorporating an element of excitement, such as through a home-made chemical reaction, you will motivate your child into enthusiastically learning about the wonders of science!
The benefits of doing experiments
Apart from adding a splash of fun into scientific learning, doing experiments also has other added benefits! To start off, doing a scientific project at home will boost your child’s confidence. When the child sees that they have initiated a creation, they will be filled with an abundance of pride and self-confidence. The child will feel as though they can be capable of achieving other great things and will be filled with joy.
Experiments also help children exercise their creative outlet. Children can creatively express themselves, during an experiment which includes aspects of art, and can even be able to play around and get messy!
Children are naturally curious, and science experiments are a perfect way to nurture your child’s curiosity. Witnessing a real-life representation of their curiosities can be fascinating for a child and will completely engage them. A child’s inquiries can be answered through a science experiment. As a result, children would be more inclined to learn more, as it feeds their sense of curiosity.
Lastly, but certainly not least, science experiments help enhance a kid’s core skills. Through experiments, a child will learn about organisation, following instructions, planning, and setting goals. Kids will learn about how they need to think and plan in order to seek the answer they are searching for.
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
– Confucius
How does Twin help STEM become fun and accessible?
Twin Science assists in making STEM more fun and accessible for kids in numerous different ways. The Twin Science STEM kits merge play and learning, helping initiate an appreciation for technology and science in kids. The STEM kits teach children a plethora of scientific and robotics skills, and the incorporation of LEGO-compatible modules makes these kits an enjoyable experience for kids. Twin Science STEM kits bridge technology and play, and allow kids to not only be creative, but also have fun whilst establishing a familiarity with STEM knowledge.
Twin Science makes STEM fun and accessible also through their app! The Twin app invites kids to play science related games, learn about scientific facts and collect coins along the way, which can be used to purchase STEM kits and even Robux!
The Twin app allows children to find out about fun trivia facts about different fields of science, and even teaches basic coding. Furthermore, the app provides amusing challenges which can easily be completed at home that help you experience scientific concepts, such as different theories of physics – like how to defy gravity!
Double-Winged Learning
What Does Double-Winged Mean at Twin?
At Twin Science, our quest is to create the change-makers of tomorrow through STEM education. Being double-winged means that children and individuals are: 1) equipped with STEM competencies and 2) develop social and emotional skills with a strong sense of social responsibility. By growing these two wings, kids will be empowered to fly high and have a truly positive impact on our world. We believe that to raise such individuals, we need to make learning fun, engaging and inspiring.
Why Double-Winged?
The fact of the matter is that science is not only a matter of the brain but also a matter of the heart. Along with receiving a STEM education and gaining 21st century skills, kids also need to learn social awareness, understand what responsible decision making is, exercise their conscience, and perhaps most importantly, consider the collective wellbeing of society. For a society to thrive we need individuals that are not just subject matter experts but innovators and thinkers that have a strong conscience so that they can work for the greater good of the society of the planet we live on.
How We Nurture Double-Winged Individuals
Under the umbrella of a meaningful social message, our lesson plans, STEM Kits, and the Twin App cover core scientific concepts while instilling social emotional learning and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals into our content. Learning about energy conversion while building a drawing robot and exploring the importance of teamwork is just one example of how we offer a well-integrated experience.
Twin Kits
Our award-winning Twin Kits make hands-on learning fun and simple with magnetic modules that can easily be attached and detached. Children can tinker with the modules and see the impact of their creation right away. The kits encourage children to question, create and problem-solve every step of the way, providing them with a medium to hone their 21st century skills. Inside our kits are dozens of projects aimed at teaching critical skills as well as communicating the importance of conscientious design and innovation.
Twin App
The Twin app offers a unique play experience to children, enabling them to discover their passions and unleash their talents in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), as well as the Arts. There are hundreds of fun, hands-on activities and experiments that can be made with simple household items! Activities are designed to improve children’s 21st century skills such as problem solving and creative thinking. There are also many informative and fun animations and videos, followed by fun quizzes and games about a wide range of topics. Children can also play age-appropriate trivia and challenge their peers on Twin! With thousands of kid-friendly questions, Twin offers one of the best trivia experiences out there.
Education for self-deployment
In Spain, there is currently a project, an experiment that is called the 4 day working week.
I sometimes wonder whether our children would know what to do with that spare day. Because we taught them mathematics, we taught them geography, we taught them just that and the other.
But we haven’t taught them how to volunteer, how to be themselves, how to experience wonder, how to be responsible, how to have fun. All those things. So the question becomes about education and schooling, not for employment but for self deployment. And I think that’s something we need to face head on.
From personal experience, over the last 25 years I’ve been lied to by all sorts of people.
Because every time there was a new piece of technology, I was told that my life would be easier. I’d have less work. I’d work fewer hours. My phone goes off all the time. Because I work globally. I have to physically turn it off because I am getting emails 24 hours. The expectations are that we answer as quickly as possible. So I think one of the lessons we need to learn is that we need to let technology work for us. Rather than for us to be the slave of the demands that technology brings about. And I think some of the issues with people’s mental well being are directly related to this. We are no longer in control.
Perhaps we could compare that side of things back to the early working conditions of the industrial revolution. When people were also under immense pressures, be the different pressures. So I think we have a long journey to go but my main issue is about the quality of life.
And finally, I think the issue of the technology in general is, and covid has shown a light in that sense onto a very ugly dark space. Technology, internet access, and learning through this is a human right.
It is technology to education and internet access in particular to education is what clean water is to health. And if we don’t facilitate this we will become globally less democratic. The gap between have and have not will increase. Because the gap between can and can not has increased. And the irony, that in the 21.century, the gap between rich and poor should become bigger. Because of an invention that had the potential to make the gap smaller is something that we should collectively be ashamed of. That’s the lesson we need to learn very fast.
Same Classroom, Different Century
transcript taken from Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE’s talk – details below
In the United Kingdom, we have the National Health Service. It is 70 or so years old. It is probably, one might argue, the United Kingdom’s finest invention. Because it is an organization that is double-winged: It has the head, it has the heart. And it does those two things brilliantly. Not perfectly, but brilliantly.
Look at what an operating theatre in a hospital looked like a hundred years ago. Look at an operating theatre now. In order to get to the hospital, I need a car. Look at a car from a hundred years ago, look at a car now.
When I fly to İstanbul, a hundred years ago with an airplane, compared to the Turkish Airlines flight now. Look how the world has changed. And look how, in schooling terms, we still deliver the same thing, but we expect outcomes that meet that changed world.
It’s not going to work, is it? At some point, we’re going to need to be brave enough and take stock, and drive change. And I don’t think that change is going to come from politicians. Politicians, by and large, are populists, want to be reelected, and they’re not specialists. The Secretary of State for Education, for instance, is not an education specialist. And many of the people he or she surrounds themselves with are not specialists either. And actually quite often they are either too arrogant or too proud to talk to the specialists and listen to what they’ve got to say.
It’s a very strange thing, education, in that it is shaped by people who know very little about it and the people who know lots about it are deliberately ignored. There is of course also the question about education as something that we all do, that we all have a responsibility for. The businesses, for example, used to have a vested interest: Think of the Industrial Revolution era. Businesses at the moment, some hundred years later, don’t necessarily behave anymore as if they have a vested interest. They sit and they wait for the children to come out of school, and then they go, “They haven’t got the skills we need.”
Well, actually, unfold your arms, roll up your sleeves, and go and work in those schools to have better achievements. Then there is another point, that is for me the biggest difference between a hundred years ago and now. It is a lesson that we need to learn very quickly.
The purpose of schooling a hundred years ago was clear. It was related to the economy and the Industrial Revolution. But that was two hundred years ago – that story was then. We need to ask ourselves the question now, a number of questions really. Why do we send children to school and why is it the same?
The text you have read is taken from The Heart of Science Talks, a series of opinion pieces in video format, with renowned educators, scientists, specialists, and everyone who carries within themselves the heart of science. Topics range from education to robotics, life skills and conscientious thinking. On our Youtube channel, you can watch a new installation every Saturday. These are bite-sized videos & essays, great to accompany your morning coffee. In the next 8 weeks, Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE will take us on a journey through schooling, education, learning, aspiration, and inspiration!
