In my fall 3rd-year “STEM in Early Childhood” class, I noticed a common trend: The pre-service teachers, who were all women, shared a stereotypical belief that they were not math or science people, and therefore not equipped to teach STEAM. I typically assign a hefty 20-page final project in my STEM course, but I decided to take a more playful and hands-on approach for this group of students. My motivation was simple: I wanted to help the class build confidence in teaching STEAM concepts.
Fortunately, a year prior, one of my 4th-year senior capstone students had prior experience with high school robotics and was interested in finding a screen-free way to introduce robotics to Dean College’s Children’s Center. She discovered the KIBO robot, and for her capstone project wrote a grant application for the Dean College Innovation Grant. She won the grant, which allowed the Dean Children’s Center to buy two KIBO kits and do an independent study project focused on implementing the hands-on, screen-free robot with four- and five-year-old children at Dean College’s Children’s Center. This inspired me to incorporate KIBO into my STEM course for pre-service teachers.
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