To celebrate 2016’s Week of Making (don’t tell me you forgot!), the National Science Foundation has awarded a total of $1.5 million to five small projects looking to get kids involved with STEM topics, creative play and generally making stuff.
It’s not just funding a new gadget or tool library, though — there’s quite a variety of approaches here.
University of Maryland researchers note that maker spaces, while touted as valuable community resources and good entry paths for STEM fields, are often inaccessible to the likes of inner-city youth: Even if they had a maker space nearby, many may not have the time or money to engage with it.
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!
Make a robot friend with Adafruit’s CRICKIT – A Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit. It’s an add-on to our popular Circuit Playground Express, FEATHER and other platforms to make and program robots with CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. Start controlling motors, servos, solenoids. You also get signal pins, capacitive touch sensors, a NeoPixel driver and amplified speaker output. It complements & extends your boards so you can still use all the goodies on the microcontroller, now you have a robotics playground as well.
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!