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.

Plans for building SAM Studio began when we heard that Google Workbench would be depreciated in December 2020 - it really has been a crazy year!

SAM Labs is releasing SAM Studio to educators on October 29, 2020.

How do we provide educational equity for all students? This has been a huge question in education and in today’s world. With COVID-19 affecting classrooms across the globe, this question has become that much more important to both educators and parents.

SAM Labs Announces a No-Tech STEAM at Home Pack STEAM at Home Pack - Computational Thinking Illuminating Living Rooms in the US, the UK, and Around the World.

Grants and funding. You’ve probably heard about about them for pushing classroom initiatives, but it often seems like a lot of time, confusion and work to even consider as an avenue. For that reason, grants are often pushed aside as an option when more pressing daily tasks need to take place in schools.

With SAM Labs' recent launch of the Season One Global Creators Competition, students from all over the world have the opportunity to dream big and put their design skills to work. With dozens of awards to win and a chance for their work to be showcased on an international stage, there’s no shortage of excitement this season.