Can a Shipping Container Increase Access to Hands-On STEM? #STEM #Education
This STEM classroom is packed into a shipping container and is touring the country. By creating a moveable lab the team behind the Curiosity Cube hope to reach more students. Via Scientific American:
The Curiosity Cube is an offshoot of the earlier Curiosity Labs program. And while the Curiosity Labs give students a chance to dive deeper – with pre- and post-activity curriculum materials for teachers – they compete for classroom time and cannot always provide access to sophisticated, scientific equipment. Jeffrey Whitford, Head of Corporate Responsibility, said that the Curiosity Cube hopes to do something about the question of access – both to experts and to hands-on science experiences.
The 2017 Curiosity Cube had equipment to let each student extract his or her DNA, explore microscopy with 3-D imaging on a large screen, and then see a 3-D printer in action. As a mobile lab, the shipping container may seem like an odd choice. But it provided a self-contained solution that didn’t depend on the resources that a school had on site. And as far as the mobile part, the cube traveled ~18,000 miles in its first year.
Scientists from across the country had a chance to get trained and staff the lab. The rotating crew gave a lot of staff scientists the chance to reconnect with young excitement, keeping the interaction fresh on both sides…Ask most kids what a scientist looks like, and they will describe some version of an old, white guy. Getting to meet scientists from across the spectrum of age, race, and gender meant kids had a chance to picture themselves in a scientist’s shoes.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
