Relevance

Demands and requirements for the workforce have been changing rapidly due to digital transformation, and the knowledge and skills acquired today will not be enough in future. At the same time, demand for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) skills is on the rise and expected to grow, and educators should take it into account. In the time when STEM has become one of the most important values in European education, it is particularly important for schoolteachers and trainers working in the informal education to acquire the skills that make them STEM and STE(A)M (including Arts in STEM programmes) – ready.

How to achieve this? How to make teachers and trainers STE(A)M-ready and help them develop and sustain students’ interest in STE(A)M? How to ensure the change when educators are eager to acquire new competences themselves, adopt the cross-disciplinary STE(A)M approaches and implement those in their work? And how to support educator preparation for this change?

The consortium of seven partners from six countries have designed the STEAMonEdu project to address this challenge.  We believe that if the change is carried through collaborative networks of educators, students, researchers, and other stakeholders, it is likely to be more successful.

In this context, the STEAMonEdu project will research how to strengthen STE(A)M education and will provide an online environment to support the eco-system, that will be based on a bottom-up approach, where  different stakeholders work collaboratively to design, develop and implement STE(A)M content, practices, projects, and policies. The project will develop and test the integrated modular training system that can be easily transferred and adapted at local, regional and national level.

 Partners

The partnership was set up considering the required expertise to realise the professional development of educators and includes:

• R&D state institute Computer Technology Institute and Press “Diophantus” (CTI) with its expertise in project management and in ICT solutions for training;
• four non-profit organisations experienced in developing methodologies, community outreach and training: 21st Century Competence Centre in Germany, Stati Generali dell’Innovazione (SGI) in Italy, EOS Foundation in Romania, Colectic in Spain,
• The Regional Directorate of Primary and Secondary Education of Western Greece (PDEDE) bringing expertise in design and evaluation of methodologies, and
• a European network – ALL DIGITAL with its experience in advocacy, dissemination, and exploitation

The two-year project was kicked-off with the partners’ meeting on 21-22 January 2020 in Athens hosted by the lead partner CTI. During the meeting the partners reviewed all aspects of the project implementation. They explored the  plans for the roll-up and promotion of the project, considered carefully how to develop the STE(A)M repository, the learning materials, how to build and grow the community of practice, and carry out the STE(A)M policy evaluation. The pilot partners agreed on a number of following steps, and it was a valuable and productive start to the project.

Follow the project news on social media with the hashtag #STEAMonEdu

Teaching and learning in the virtual environment are powerful solutions for education, given the social distance imposed by the coronavirus. Classic study tools had to be quickly replaced with digital tools and internet resources in order for the educational process to continue.

With the closure of schools, the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research encouraged teachers to be innovative and recommended the use of a set of digital classroom teaching tools. STEAMonEDU project partner EOS Romania, as a partner for education of the Ministry, has implemented a remote working system: video conferencing applications, a common place in the business environment, are now used as “virtual classrooms”. Shared, the computer screen becomes the “writing board”; the class can be put “on mute” while the teacher explains the topic;  the chat field hosts questions until the teacher opens the lecture time for discussion.

Teachers were not prepared to use this kind of tools and resources and required training and assistance to use them and adapt their teaching process. To support them, EOS Romania developed a range of resources and guides available in the national language, provided technical support to schools, and prepared a series of webinars about obtaining and using connection accounts to the resources made available by the Ministry of Education and Research. All the guides, resources and webinar recordings were uploaded onto EOS website and are available for free for all schools and teachers who want to use them.

The virtual courses are organized on secure web domains, from which the educational resources made available by the Ministry of Education and Research are accessed. Video conferencing systems facilitate not only simple screen sharing, but also learning how to use other computer applications and encourage collaborative work in the projects developed by students.

During 15-31 March 2020, EOS Romania ran 22 webinars to train and support Romanian teachers.

How the required skills of future employees are trained is hardly anchored in the rigid German education system. Meanwhile implementation of individual competences in connection with media use or in connection with STEM subjects has already taken place. However, STE(A)M education is still in its very early infancy in the German education system. Some actions and initiatives are already visible for kindergarten and pre-school, but for primary, secondary and high school STEAM is not anchored in German educational system. In contrast, a considerable number of non-formal educators and initiatives offer a wide range of STE(A)M educational opportunities.

Nationwide initiatives on STEM and Arts

The digitisation is already demanding that education policy focuses on broader skills – especially the 21st Century Skills – communication, creativity, critical thinking and collaboration.

Even if the education policy level has not yet shown any efforts for the implementation of a STE(A)M framework, some initiatives that can be linked to STE(A)M education are visible in Germany.

In the nationwide initiative “Code your Life“, children and young people experience the connection between algorithms and artificial image creation or create music. “We encourage the imagination and creative use of programming tasks by teaching children and young people to use our Turtle application to define geometric shapes and algorithmic sequences that produce artistic images,“ explains Jutta Schneider, Project manager of “Code your Life”. In recent years, around 300,000 children and young people were involved in activities as well as their teachers and educators which are trained in using and preparing the coding activities. A comprehensive range of teaching materials, online tutorials and teacher training courses are part of the offer.

The combination of art with technology, mathematics and computer science is made visible every year by the award and the associated exhibition Der Deutsche Multimedia Preis mb21 (German multimedia Award mb21). Children and young people from different age groups submit their own creative multimedia ideas and products like creative blogs, sound combinations for the city of the future or painting music by using artificial intelligence. At the annual media festival, the winners’ objects are exhibited, they can be viewed and tried out by the audience. For example, 3D printers can be used to make imaginative or useful things, soldering irons can be used to repair or reassemble technology, and artistic designs can be created.

Helpful STEM structures

STE(A)M education is not yet structurally anchored in the German education system, but for more than 14 years, STEM education has been a central issue in Germany at civil society and political level. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research published the STEM Action Plan in 2019 and defined four fields of action: STEM education for children and young people, STEM professionals, opportunities for girls and women in STEM, and STEM in society.

It would also be possible to access the structure of the previously established STEM networks, which have already created local bodies for STEM education and training and support educational institutions such as kindergartens and schools in exploring and discovering the world of mathematics, IT, science and technology with children and young people.

The aim of these measures is to secure skilled workers in Germany and to promote female employees in technical and scientific fields. There are already numerous civil society initiatives, ranging from the early childhood sector – Stiftung Haus der kleinen Forscher (House of Little Researchers Foundation), through pre-schools and primary schools – awarding STEM-friendly schools – to STEM regions for secondary schools.

STEM Education in Germany

The foundation “Haus der kleinen Forscher” promotes STEM activities for very young children and promotes the natural urge to research. With local players in over 200 local networks, it supports educational professionals in kindergartens with ideas and training to support and awaken interest for STEM education in children.

But even in the area of STEM education, German secondary schools do not provide cross-curricular schooling on the one hand and do not anchor individual STEM subjects on the other. The disciplines of engineering and computer science are not or only rudimentarily included in the educational plans of the Länder. Interdisciplinary lesson planning between several teachers takes place only rarely. The German learning and school structure, in which teachers conduct and organise lessons, leaves little room for interdisciplinary exchange between colleagues. “In an international comparison, Germany has a relatively high number of teaching hours – up to 28 compared to 15-18 hours in China, for example. This leaves little room for further training or for the development and implementation of interdisciplinary learning opportunities in German schools,” said Dr. Ekkehard Winter, Co-speaker of Nationales MINT Forum (National STEM Forum).

Dr Ekkehard Winter (image – Andres Süß/NFM)

National STEM Forum

One of the central tasks of the National STEM Forum (Nationales MINT Forum, NMF) is to provide impetus for strengthening STEM education in Germany at federal, state and municipal level. The members of the NMF – 30 renowned institutions from science, business and the foundation sector – are involved, for example, in linking school and extracurricular activities in more than 130 STEM regions. These are networks that create locally appropriate, centrally coordinated and sustainably effective offers along the entire education chain in the STEM subjects. Project days, researcher workshops and labs, teacher training and teaching materials are common offerings for those responsible for education. With Parliamentary Evenings or the annual National STEM Summit, the NMF stimulates political debates and addresses key demands to education policy decision-makers. But what about the connection between Art and STEM? Dr. Ekkehard Winter sees this as a broadening of perspectives also with regard to the demands on the workforce in a digitalised working environment. In a working group, the NMF now wants to develop recommendations on how cooperation across subject boundaries can be successful and thus stimulate the debate on STE(A)M education in Germany.

The European project STEAMonEdu

The current project STEAMonEdu initiates a discussion on the STE(A)M educational and competence framework for pedagogical training. In addition, a MOOC and an online-supported in-service training course will illustrate examples of good practice and STE(A)M learning activities to educational staff, teachers. A European STE(A)M community provides impulses for the establishment of STE(A)M education. Helliwood media & education (21^st CCC) is the German consortium partner and is responsible for the implementation of the project in Germany. With its experience in implementing media education and offering activities for children and youth within nationwide educational initiatives, it will create and support the German STE(A)M Community.

by Katrin Schuberth, Helliwood media & education

Stati Generali dell’Innovazione

Il digital divide e la carenza di competenze digitali sono diventati una vera emergenza, un ostacolo allo sviluppo economico e sociale, un freno alla crescita professionale e alla occupabilità dei cittadini, che pongono l’Italia in fondo alle classifiche europee per attrattività. “L’obiettivo di Repubblica Digitale è “creare un’”alleanza” di soggetti pubblici e privati, che abbia come punto di riferimento il Manifesto di Repubblica Digitale e che operi come una comunità di co-progettazione, condivisione e collaborazione”.

Sono tante le associazioni, enti locali, amministrazioni, imprese, Università, scuole che hanno aderito con i loro progetti, mettendo in rete esperienze e competenze: Stati Generali dell’Innovazione lo ha fatto con STE(A)MonEDU, progetto finanziato dal programma Erasmus+ dell’Unione Europea.

Per poter aderire al Manifesto le iniziative proposte devono essere relative a tre ambiti: alfabetizzazione digitale di base e superamento del divario digitale culturale; sviluppo di competenze digitali per il lavoro; educazione alle tecnologie emergenti e alla diffusione della cultura digitale.

Guarda la scheda completa dedicata a SGI/STE(A)MonEDU sul sito del Ministero dell’Innovazione.

Núria Salán Ballesteros (Barcelona, b.1963) is a Catalan chemist, professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and current president of the Catalan Society of Technology (SCT). Last year, she won a Special Mention from the DonaTic Awards, which accredit the excellence of talent and female digital entrepreneurship in Catalonia.

We spoke with her about the STE(A)M community in Catalonia.

• In your opinion, which is the situation of the maker and STE(A)M movement education in Catalonia? Incipient or initial, in development or in consolidation?

The maker movement, during this first period of confinement by COVID-19, has revealed itself as a collaborative movement with immediate and highly effective solutions, in such a way that the image that a part of society could have of the maker movement is “a group of geeks”. But more than ever, the solutions provided by this movement in all its forms (3D printing, sewing, mechanical assembly groups, etc.), have been essential to improve the quality of life for many and many people. An applause!

• Do you think we have significant groups of expertise in STE(A)M education in Catalonia ?

Yes, definitely! Personally, I have rediscovered a group of technology teachers from all over Catalonia, who have turned to offer their tools, their material, their time and their know-how to help organize a project like Telecomunicat.cat. Through this project, mobile devices are supplied to people affected by COVID-19 in public hospitals in Catalonia, to support health personnel and that there are no missing vents, supports for masks, safety screens or other items. And I say “rediscovered” because I already knew a good part of the things they did, but I have verified their ability to make immediate, creative proposals, redesign elements, etc. This teaching team are the best STE(A)M references that we have right now. We have a lot of talent and many expert people among our technology teachers!

• Has the demand and interest of the teaching community on these topics been growing?

Inevitably yes. There has been a lot of curiosity to know how robots that can make 2,400 PCR tests a day or ASSUM devices that sterilize sanitary spaces have been designed and manufactured, with the collaboration of people from all over the world to take them to the hospitals of Catalonia. This curiosity has led to the emergence of groups like Covidwarriors.org. It was time!

• Do you think that the teaching teams have enough resources?

With what we have done so far, we have enough to do initial training in technology at schools. Now, after which we have seen and lived, ICTs have been the undeniable protagonists to guarantee communication and to avoid the isolation of society in this situation of confinement, therefore, ICT terminology that was not common to society now is. In any case, what we have lacked more is resources rather than knowledge… We have adapted to virtual classes, to guarantee virtual learning scenarios, to convert practical content into digital, but it is not very useful if our students can not access.  The digital gap has revealed that not everyone has the same opportunities. This has been the main inconvenience for teachers.

• How do you value the training of teachers on the subject? And the quality of the projects that are presented from the different centres?

There are teachers who have a lot of and very good training because they have been organizing activities for years like Robolot, Roboresme, Robotseny, Tramuntec, technology fairs, Mercatec, etc. and have offered to do “not expert” teacher training. What we have also detected is that a part of the teachers have not felt like adapting. Those who wanted to train, have found training scenarios, created by colleagues, like CESIRE network. We can say that we will start 2020-21 course with a “renewed” teacher team in technological skills (who wanted to renew them, naturally). But I am afraid that the scope of activities carried out by public school teachers has had a very diverse reception by students, because it has been subject to the abilities and resources of the students (availability of PCs or tablets, WIFI availability …). Again I refer to the fact that the digital gap has been very marked.

• What strategies do you think can best serve to extend and broaden the reach of this movement and resources within the educational community?

That teachers know that what they propose can be done and that their students can enjoy it. And let them know that they can count on the support of their centres. I think teachers who have spent more time and hours preparing material, training, supporting, etc., should be recognized for that.

• Do you think that this type of activities, projects and experiences can serve to democratize access to technology, or is there a risk of generating elitist spaces of exclusivity?

On the one hand, the situation has let clear that there is a (large) part of the technology that is much more accessible than it might seem, and we can enjoy impressive ICT offers. This has allowed us to stay connected, in a fairly globalized way, and the appearance of devices that require little to function (open software, free software, open platforms) have contributed to democratizing part of this technology. But, of course, there is still a perception that technology, and studies related to technology and engineering, are elitist. And it should be emphasized that this perception is totally wrong and out of place. In the past, engineers were important gentlemen, with ties, who made a lot of money (or much more than factory workers), but there were also many people who did “magic” without wearing a tie (and without collecting the salaries of the gentlemen). I mean by this that engineering and technology is present in many jobs and tasks from our day to day. We need TECH talent in all these areas, with diversity, with parity, with all kinds of points of view.

• Did you think that this theme helps or hinders gender work (and the gap) within technical-scientific vocations?

Yes, inevitably an important gender gap is generated. Girls are more attracted to vocations more linked to “saving the world”, and do not perceive that technology means too to “save the world”. On the other hand, boys (and I speak in general, no one takes it badly) are attracted by initiatives more related to leisure, competitiveness, etc. If a girl says she likes cars, there are still people who don’t see it as something normalized. This, in the middle of the XXI century, causes female vocations to be lost from the beginning of the formative stage. On the other hand, if any examples of technology will be applied to quality of life (health, medicine, etc.), many girls (and boys) would receive the message and incorporate it. Early childhood and primary education is key in this “recruitment of talent”.

• Comparing with experiences and realities of the countries of our environment at an international level, what do you think is the role of Catalonia within the international maker movement? Do you think that the projects carried out here have recognition and sufficient visibility abroad?

Personally, I believe that we can talk “from you to you” with international makers of recognized prestige. I have visited FABLABs in Berkeley and Cambridge, and we have nothing to envy from our FABLABs. I think we have the capacity, skills and talent perfectly comparable to that of others maker communities that have recognition because they have visibility. We still need a recognition of talent in our country. Catalonia can become a pioneer in this impulse of the talented community, with recognition and giving it the value it deserves. We can do it!

• Any project, resource or experience that you want to highlight?

I have said that the experience of Telecomunicat.cat has been very enriching for me during this first confinement by COVID-19. We saw that we could organize more than 80 people from all areas and TECH-ICT profiles that they didn’t know each other who knew each other and we accepted a fairly horizontal organization chart of people to move forward all together. It has been exciting! We have worked a lot, we have spent many hours, but it was worth it to see some image like a mother who could see her baby through a mobile phone. Technology has helped a lot in this terrible situation.

By Colectic

STEM education is getting higher on the Italian political agenda.

“The health emergency of these months has made it even clearer: promoting knowledge of STEM and financial subjects from an early age, particularly for young girls and students, is crucial. Inequalities start at an early age, let’s start again with education.”

With these words the Minister for Equal Opportunities and the Family Elena Bonetti announced on her Facebook page the launch of the call “STEM2020“, with which Italy invests 2 million euros from 1 July to 31 December 2020, to create courses for young girls and boys and students from 4 to 19 years of age.

The main objectives of the call are:

• to promote the empowerment of girls, stimulating them from an early age to become passionate about technical-scientific subjects, to study them, so that they can compete in the labour market of the future, taking up all the challenges;
• to overcome the stereotypes and prejudices, according to which the world of STEM subjects is exclusively for men;
• to stimulate the learning of these subjects also through innovative ways of learning the scientific method.

The project proposals are intended for schools of all levels, from pre-school to upper secondary school.

The educational areas are mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, coding, economics, robotics, animation, earth and environmental sciences, just to name a few, obviously chosen according to the age of the students and the type of school. 60% of the beneficiaries will have to be girls in order to guarantee an effective participation. Each project will be granted up to 15,000 euros and it is open to schools, universities and Third Sector organizations.

By SGI

Are you an Educator? A school principal? A VET provider? An educational policy maker? Or are you just curious, eh?

This workshop is for YOU!

Here is why:

STE(A)M education grew out of STEM education, where the “A” is a term that represents fields such as liberal arts, language arts, social studies, physical arts, fine arts etc. and its aim is to apply creative thinking to STEM projects, igniting students’ imagination and creativity through the arts. Although it is commonly accepted that basic STEM competences are critical for succeeding in most of the technical, engineering and even managerial jobs, several studies have shown that the without the “Αrts” it is impossible for students to reach their full potential!

The workshop “STE(A)M Education practices and competences” will be organised by the STEAMonEdu project consortium on 8 October at 10:00-11:30 CET as part of the ALL DIGITAL Summit.You need to register for the Summit to be able to join the workshop.

EOS Romania has worked in close collaboration with Microsoft Romania to achieve a support system so that, in terms of technology, teachers receive the support they need! Several guides have been developed in order to support teachers in the online teaching process, and they can be accessed at any time:

• Office 365 distance learning for education
• Microsoft Teams virtual classroom administration
• Homework with Microsoft Teams for Education

 Microsoft solutions for education also allow students to learn remotely for free. Content and homework / topics can be accessed online, and students and teachers can interact using online tools and collaborate individually or in work groups to meet requirements.

Why to use Microsoft Teams for Education? What are the advantages?

You can teach from anywhere, at anytime!

Teams online tool is a collaboration app which helps the team get organised and have conversations, all in one place.

You can learn from anywhere, anytime!

Publish the content of study materials online or deliver interactive courses online. Teachers and students can use a single interface through Teams platform to learn, collaborate and interact online, accessing information from any mobile device or browser. Using Teams, students can view the content of the study material, can collaborate with other students, interact with teachers, and transfer homework online. Teachers can review students homework and provide real-time suggestions.

Online classes

Teachers can take online classes, share presentations, or use the digital whiteboard. Teachers and students can interact using digital whiteboard, communicate via messaging, audio, and video.

The Office 365 plan for education and Teams application ensure a high protection of data and users privacy.