STEAM Education is now a fast growing circle gaining prevalence in Elementary and High schools in Nigeria, and all over the world. You may have been used to the Traditional ‘Jet Club’ of those days and might sincerely wonder, “What is the difference? What advantage does STEAM have over the traditional JET club?”.
Like we said before, STEAM is the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Crafts, and Mathematics. It is not a subject per say. It is the method adapted to enable our kids become innovators in this fast-paced world of technology.
Additionally, STEM and STEAM graduates “play a vital role in developing meaningful solutions to societal problems, such as the (COVID-19) public health crisis we are currently facing,” says Michael Milligan, CEO and executive director of ABET, a technology and engineering accreditation organization. The STEM Careers Coalition is collaborating on a COVID-19 Response Initiative project, examining how STEM professionals are pivoting their skills in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Interest in STEM can spark in different ways and the inclusion of the arts component into STEM curriculum makes it more fun to learn and more approachable to kids, especially younger children with shorter attention spans. A child who has never seen code or computer science learning will be less intimidated and more engaged if it includes something they are familiar with, like an art component. Children need to be engaged in learning and that means holding their attention on the subject matter. The easiest way to do this is to make it fun and interesting.
Art education allows students to learn things in a more open-ended and less restrictive way and make them applicable to real life. Arts and creativity are crucial to the sciences, technology, engineering, and computer science. Arts are used in website and user interfaces design, advertising, product design and usability, branding and start-up creation among countless other uses, all things that are paramount to STEM learning and careers. So STEAM education is crucial to educate and prepare the next generation of the American, and global workforce, and to allow this generation to create jobs, grow the economy, and address emerging environmental and societal challenges.
Incorporating the arts into STEM is also crucial not only for the additional skill set it can layer on top of hard science knowledge. If creativity is incorporated as part of the teaching of STEM, it can help students to learn. We all process information differently and using an arts-based teaching format can help to engage visual, auditory, kinesthetic learners. STEAM is all about sparking learning with hands-on activities and allowing the freedom of creativity in often rigidly hard science fields. After all, some of the most amazing discoveries and innovations have come from one person creatively thinking outside the box.
Diversity in STEAM
Women and minorities have traditionally been under-represented in such science and technology-oriented disciplines such as engineering, mathematics, cybersecurity, data science, STEM and STEAM. Today, many organizations — private companies and government agencies as well as industry advocacy groups — are actively trying to address this inequity.
STEAM Online Courses
Several notable certifications are available for teachers and students seeking to position themselves for success in STEAM education.
In a bid to assist the global community, we have several STEAM courses that can be taken anytime and anywhere.
STEAM is exciting, and very important, specially if we aim at raising innovators that will cope and make impact in this world where innovation is needed.
