The COVID-19 pandemic has upended education for teachers, parents, and students alike, but before that revolution, there was another one just as profound. Long before parents were asked to double as in-home teachers, educators were focusing on STEM education, turning their sights to the important fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. 

How do we become more authentic in the way that we teach as educators?

These insightful education studies are a reason (or 5) we all can be hopeful about the future of today's educators and tomorrow's problem solvers. As schools, classrooms, educators and students continue to adapt and persist through the turbulence, we all should take a moment to appreciate and then support their efforts to educate and learn. Education research work such as this is vital to continuing to improve the educational experience for all.  

One of our previous blog posts outlines what a STEAM learning approach to education is (science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics), how it differs from STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and how exactly STEAM education plays a part in the real-world.

Distance learning has truly transformed the learning environment for K-12 schools, as the COVID-19 crisis has forced educators to go completely digital with their curriculum. While teachers have found an abundant supply of content and tools online to rapidly turnaround their lesson plans to teach online, there still has been a huge adjustment. Additionally, parents have taken on the additional responsibility of supporting children learning at home while students increase screen-time usage and navigate learning without being in the classroom.

What is the STAR Program? SAM Labs' Successful Teacher AcceleratoR (STAR) Program is a free, personalized instructional coaching program aimed at creating superstar STEAM and coding teachers by utilizing SAM Labs tools and resources.

In the whirlwind of school reopening policies, social distancing, contact tracing, and all the uncertainty of 2020, educators and parents had to sail new waters all on their own. Breakout rooms and Google Classrooms provided only so much engagement for kids - and naturally, academic, social, and emotional learning suffered. 

Classroom Management is something that we know educators struggle with when they are physically in the classroom with students. Some students have behavioral needs, some students are just having a bad day, some students are maybe a little too excited and wound up to focus. Add distance learning and hybrid learning to the equation and now classroom management is that much more difficult.

  My favorite moments of teaching are when I get to see students attack an open ended challenge! Facilitating the learning process as they develop their code or build their prototype is exciting in the STEM, STEAM, or coding classroom. Who wouldn’t love watching students get that puzzled look on their face as they brainstorm and think through a challenge? Offering open ended challenges allows us as teachers to take a step back and let our students take charge of their learning. We get to truly be a facilitator and push our students to think outside of the box while also continuing to check for understanding of background knowledge. 

Even if you haven’t purchased a SAM Labs kit yet, you can still use our new Digital Classroom! The digital classroom is a great tool for teaching STEAM and Learn to Code to students during distance learning, during hybrid learning, and even when in the classroom. By leveraging Nearpod to enhance interactivity and student engagement during lessons, our digital classroom takes teaching STEAM and Coding to a new level that can be experienced by current and new SAM Labs users.

Keeping students engaged can be a struggle during distance learning and that has been a major topic of concern, but what about keeping learning rigorous during distance learning? How do we provide students with meaningful and rigorous learning experiences that go beyond recall? How can we continue to set students up to develop computational thinking?

  When we decided to adapt our STEAM and Learn to Code lessons for distance learning and hybrid learning we knew immediately that Nearpod would be the best platform. We also realized that by using Nearpod the STEAM activities and lessons we adapted could be used during in classroom learning as well as for distance or hybrid models.