Our school is one of the partners in the Erasmus + project “Think Inside the Box”, during which two STEAM learning hackathons were developed to help students develop STEAM skills. The project aimed to test the activities in their own schools first and later on train the activities to teachers from other schools in their areas so they could also enjoy participating in the hackathons in their schools guided by their teachers.
At Nooruse School, we tested the activities three times, 5th and 9th grade students participated in the hackathon. The task for the younger students was to develop a path inside a given cardboard box, through which the table tennis ball would go through as slowly as possible. In addition, they learned how to program Micro:bit mini-computers and programmed a dice to draw groups. For the older students, the project was a little more complicated, they also dealt with a challenge to build special routes into the box, it contained 3D printed pieces and electronics that made them move. Both challenges created a huge amount of excitement for the students and made them use different skills on completing the task.
Overall, 66 school’s students participated in the testing activities, led by 4 teachers. The learning part was conducted during classes while the box challenge was organized either during classes or as a special event for a larger group of students.
In November, project partners from Estonia, Lithuania and Romania met at our school. The results of the experiments were discussed together, the students’ and teachers’ feedback was reviewed and the possibilities for further improvement were considered. Based on the feedback, the instructions for both students and teachers guidelines were redesigned, and the feedback surveys were corrected. Teachers were able to share experiences of what worked well during the experiments and what still need to be improved.
Information prepared by: Madli-Maria Naulainen, Kuressaare Nooruse Kool
More photos from the activities in June, 2021 can be found at the school’s photo gallery.
Recent Comments