Computational Thinking via STEM educatie in de PZ TECHLabs. (Met educatieve CT programmeer toepassingen in o.a. Virtual Reality (VR), Arduino, Tinkercad, Mindstorms EV 3)

<< Background >>To achieve the strategic goals of the 2 school partners PieterZandt Scholengemeenschap ( PZ) in NL and H.Hart Middenschool (HH) in Belgium, so that pupils have a good connection to further education and the labour market in the regions. The partnership meets the following needs (demand-driven) per target group. 1. Needs of the Management Team: The PZ and HH needs teachers skilled in STEM education, including computational thinking, to provide differentiated education in various streams, with different student characteristics. 2. The needs of PZ TECHLab teachers and HH BREE STEM teachers: Their focus is to be able to apply lego Mindstorms EV 3 in their subject lessons through training in STEM education, especially practically and very concretely. 3. The needs of instructors and teachers (ct/robotics/informatics). They want to (further) develop CT programming skills, with educational programming applications including in Arduino, Tinkercad Microbit and virtual Reality (VR). In this project, the focus was also on the realisation of practical, ready-to-use lesson plans with instructions and tutorials to be used in the STEM subject lessons as a follow-up in the web-based portal or ELE.With a good balance between ‘getting and bringing’.<< Objectives >>Goal 1: Realise the need in the STEM classroom (HH) and the TECHLabs (PZ), for Virtual Reality and Computational Thinking technology expertise promotion through courses. Goal 2: Realise the need of practical Lesson Plans regarding Educational Programming in Lego Mindstorms EV3 with concrete application in a First Lego League Challenge. Goal 3: Realise the follow-up need after the multi-day training sessions attended, of a lesson series in the web-based ELE ( Electronic Learning Environment) or webbased portal, with STEM project lessons. The development of an attractive learning line in Classroom Gdrive with practical Arduino, Microbits and TinkerCad lesson applications, to permanently realise innovative and instructive STEM assignments in TECH lessons.<< Implementation >>Activities achieved: a. A hands-on workshop at VR-in-School, to meet the need in the STEM classroom and the PZ TECHLab for education with the Oculus VR sets. Goal: to master VR Technology in simple form of e.g. Google expeditions and do practical CT.b. Organising 2 times a professionalisation with multi-day STEM modules (15) in Bree, for teachers and instructors, to practise Educational Programming with Lego Mindstorms EV 3, via a First Lego League Challenge. c. Realising the construction of a concrete lesson series with Arduino, Microbit and TinkerCad applications. The designed webbased portal or ELE ( Electronic Learning Environment) learning line contains a collection of concrete tutorials and lesson plans with instructions, to facilitate innovative and instructive STEM projects in the subject lessons.<< Results >>Significantly increased professionalisation of STEM education of teachers and improved final results regarding Computational Thinking of students. a. By concretely meeting the 3 needs, the STEM classroom/TECHLab teachers are also able to take their teaching to a higher level after the training with the acquired pedagogical-didactic skills and with the concrete A 4 lesson plans. b. The teachers at the 2 educational institutes receive more varied teaching material via customised Lesson Plans to create a context-rich learning environment for their pupils. c. The follow-up database ensures that after the course modules have been followed, the teaching material is actually applied in teaching practice and that the pupils are introduced to the teaching material in a more concrete and in-depth manner at their level. In this online database with concrete lessons, we also realise the ‘getting and bringing’ of educational output for both institutions.