{"id":33731,"date":"2023-11-29T12:02:37","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T12:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.avenor.ro\/?p=33731"},"modified":"2023-11-29T12:04:59","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T12:04:59","slug":"steam-a-learning-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.avenor.ro\/en\/blog\/steam-a-learning-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"STEAM – A Learning Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the conclusion of the initial module of the STEAM project, tailored and introduced specifically for the fifth grade, Smaranda Nicolau reflects on the students\u2019 progress through the first module of this innovative educational project and delves into the project’s underlying principles. She explains the main objective beyond teaching students four subjects from their conventional curriculum and explores how this approach alters perspectives, impacting both students and teachers. Smaranda Nicolau teaches Drama and Media Studies to High School students and is the proud co-creator of the year 5 project alongside the wonderful team of teachers in the STEAM project (in alphabetical order Victor Bratu (Computer Science), Salih Gokcel (Design & Technology), Dr. Bogdan Top\u00eerceanu (Arts), Vlad Oancea (Drama), and Irina Zamfir (Coordonator).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/i>At the beginning of the school year, Avenor College launched an exciting trans-curricular STE<\/span>A<\/b>M Education project titled \u201cHow to Build Another Me.\u201d The project <\/span>challenges students in 5th Grade to learn about what makes humans behave the way they do<\/b>, by attempting to build a robot with human-like behaviour. In order to build the Robot, students will require conceptual knowledge and skills from four different subjects – <\/span>Computer Science (CS), Design and Technology (DT), Arts (A) <\/i><\/b>and<\/span> Drama (D)<\/i><\/b> – which make up <\/span>the 4 STEAM Modules that kids complete throughout the year.<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This means that this year\u2019s Grade 5 don\u2019t have CS, DT, Arts and Drama in their timetables. Instead, they have STEAM. It also means, instead of studying each subject for 45 minutes a week for a year, they use their <\/span>6 week intensive STEAM Drama Module<\/b> to create and perform the Robot\u2019s story and personality, they use their <\/span>6 week intensive STEAM Computer Science Module<\/b> to <\/span>code the way the Robot moves how it communicates<\/b>, they use their <\/span>6 week intensive STEAM Arts Module<\/b> to <\/span>create their Robot\u2019s visual appearance<\/i><\/b> and their <\/span>6 week intensive STEAM Design and Technology Module<\/b> to <\/span>design the moving parts, 3D print and assemble them into the final Robot,<\/i><\/b> which the audience (you!) will be invited to meet and interact with at the end of year STEAM Exhibition.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This project proposes an altogether different way of engaging with curricular concepts in each of the subjects above. Ultimately, the aim of How To Build Another Me is to <\/span>deliver an educational experience that is relevant and provides long-term understanding not only of concepts and skills, but also of the ways in which these concepts and skills are applied in real life environments, outside of school.<\/b> The aim, in other words, is the Future Readiness of our students. Building a Robot is simply an excellent excuse to achieve an aim that is already worthwhile.<\/span><\/p>\n

CORE LEARNING – INPUT – PROCESS – OUTPUT<\/b><\/p>\n

One of the main goals of this project is <\/span>to provide a unified learning experience<\/b>, where students are encouraged to transfer learning from one discipline to another. In order to do this, we chose a single and simple piece of core learning to <\/span>connect<\/b> the four modules together. That piece of core learning is the triad of <\/span>INPUT – PROCESS – OUTPUT<\/b>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How do students learn about Input-Process-Output?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They are required explicitly to <\/span>transfer<\/b> knowledge from each of their four modules to the others in order to figure out <\/span>what kind of INPUT it takes to generate human-like OUTPUT in a ROBOT.<\/b><\/p>\n

This lesson takes on a different form in each subject. This is also key to encouraging transfer – facilitating the students\u2019 encounter with the same notion in different contexts will help consolidate the understanding that this notion can be transferred to further contexts. Indeed, we deal with Input-Process-Output in two ways:<\/span><\/p>\n