You’ve heard that jobs are a little harder to find these days. And that should concern you, not as an educator who already has a good job. But as an educator who is trying to prepare students for their future careers . One of the ways you can help them be better prepared is to provide regular and engaging opportunities for them to take part in STEM activities.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) support that assertion. Employment in occupations related to STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—is projected to grow to more than 9 million between 2012 and 2022. That’s an increase of about 1 million jobs over 2012 employment levels.
One of the best and, quite frankly, easiest ways to incorporate STEM activities into your classroom is through robotics. For the price of a kit and some software (around $500 to get started), your elementary, middle, and high school students can create, build, and program a million different things, limited only by their imaginations. And you as the teacher don’t necessarily have to know a lot about robotics yourself as you can have them use the discovery learning method (and some judicious searching on the Internet and YouTube) to learn on their own. Working in teams, they will practice collaboration, design, planning, troubleshooting, inventing, writing, assembling, and so much more.
TCEA offers a ton of support for investigating the world of robotics. From our ROBO-SIG (a special interest group made up of educators who are interested in sharing robotics with their students) to our free-to-member robotics webinars to our Robotics Contest Forum, we’ve got you covered. And if your students are up for a challenge, we provide 20 regional and one state contest with two different approaches to robotics where they can shine. To learn more about how to begin, visit this website. Registration for regional contests will be open November 9-22, 2016.
Your students deserve a better future than we have. That’s part of the American dream. Taking a step into robotics is one way to provide that to them. And TCEA is here to help you.