STE(A)M tools for the classroom: the case of the ByLinedu Association

14 Desembre 2020

The ByLinedu Association is a Valencian organization that works to help reduce the digital divide with STE(A)M activities and projects for digital literacy and educational innovation. We explain some of their projects.

Learning and having fun using technology is the main motto of ByLinedu, which has been working for eight years on educational NGO projects that use technology as a tool for social transformation.

One of such projects is the CodeDojo Valencia, an international initiative that promotes the learning of programming for children and young people between 7 and 17 years old. With the motto “Be cool!“, this network is made up of more than 1,000 CodeDojos in 65 countries. It is an open and free initiative, where they seek to promote the training of minors (whom they call ninjas) with the participation of adults, whether they are parents or volunteer mentors.

In this dojo, the ninjas learn how to program, develop websites, mobile applications or video games using applications adapted to different ages: Scratch, AppInventor, Arduino, HTML, Javascript, etc, as well as different electronic elements. They also have a CoderDojo Girls group for the participation of STE(A)M girls. The children work through observation, quizzes, various worksheets and interest groups with different sessions where challenges arise. The participants are advised by the different mentors, who collaborate by transmitting their knowledge and experience.

Another of its projects is the European Erasmus+ Make In Class project, which aims to help STE(A)M teachers and educators to promote activities in the classroom based on maker culture to prevent school dropouts.

Related to this project, there is also an Erasmus+ STEAM-H, a programme improving STE(A)M learning in primary schools to support teachers and educators to improve student learning.

And since technology has to be fun, they have created the game Oca STEM, a game of the goose board in which men and women experts in different fields of STE(A)M knowledge are represented. The game aims to be inclusive so that people with functional disabilities can participate fully, integrating audio-video phrases, textured dice and / or Braille, as well as texts and multimedia elements.