MARLENA PLEBAŃSKA
KATARZYNA TROJAŃSKA

STEAM Lessons

1st edition

eLitera
Warsaw 2018

Copyright © Marlena Plebańska, Katarzyna Trojańska, 2018
All rights reserved

Business and Finance Academy Vistula
Reviewed by prof dr.hab. Elżbieta Jędrych

Edited by
Andrzej Dominiczak

Cover designed by
Julia Plebańska

Cover made by
Benjamin, Nel

Partner

ISBN 978-83-63732-04-2

1st edition

E-book made by: eLitera s.c.

Why was this book written?

Year 2017 was the year of the hedgehog. I was fascinated with the idea of rescuing hedgehogs after accidents. That is why during all the conferences that I attended, I presented Polish STEAM project in which students created a system for 3D printing of artificial limbs for hedgehogs that allowed the animals to go back to normal functioning in their natural habitat. My fascination with hedgehogs was so great that when my daughter was born, she reminded me of a little hedgehog - and that is how her nickname was created. A year has passed and little Nel still goes by “Jeżyk” or “Jeżynka” (Polish for little hedgehog). In 2017 I got to know a lot of other STEAM projects, for example a project entitled “Bird Feeding System.” In that project, students were presented with the following task: design a bird feeding system in the school’s garden. In the first year of the project, which was carried out during science lessons, students learned about bird species living in the garden. They observed them, recorded their behaviour in their natural habitat, learned about their life and eating behaviour. Then, students designed a wooden box in the technical workshop, which served as a prototype of the bird feeder. Using Arduino blocks, they were able to design a bird feeding system that provided appropriate doses of seeds from a dispenser that could be installed in any part of the box. The seeds were then transferred into a bowl placed inside the box. Students tested the prototype in the garden, observed how birds used it, and then made amendments. After that, the prototype was replicated on a 3D printer. Examples of other interesting projects that I encountered are: an automatic watering system for classroom plants, a project entitled the Warsaw songs, a project called painting with robots, and another one called robotic theatre. Influential situations and interesting people like Katarzyna Trojańska, the co-author of this book, inspired me to write it. Together with Kasia, after the first STEAM workshop that we run in 2017, we started looking for a way to create a book. We wanted it to be handy, with a short theoretical introduction and lesson plans that were verified beforehand. We have created lesson plans which we then tested in Kasia’s school and during various workshop activities. That is how this book, STEAM Lessons, came to life. We have incorporated in it a handful of inspirations and a set of STEAM lesson plans. All activities that we described in the book are carried out as part of STEAMPolska (STEAMPoland) project.

Introduction

Educational systems are currently undergoing major transformations around the world due to the fourth industrial revolution and urgency to match educational policies to labour market needs in a more appropriate way. The competences of the 21st century are becoming essential nowadays. These competences, to put it simply, can be divided into two most important groups - digital and social. School develops both these types of competences only marginally, still focusing on students’ individual acquisition of encyclopaedic knowledge without any opportunities of using it in practice. This leads to a disastrous disappointment in school as an institution and to learning in general on a societal level (Poland has the lowest lifelong learning indicator in the age group 25-64 in the whole European Union with the rate of 3,7%, while the European average is 11%).

Education is characterized by lack of correlation with the labour market and lack of incentives for children to learn key educational areas from the perspective of the knowledge economy - these areas constitute STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Maths). What is more, vocational education is perceived negatively, there is a surplus of graduates with general higher education compared to those with vocational and technical education (70% to 30% - and that 30% are often not educated according to the needs of the employers). At the same time, as much as 60% of employers in Poland complain about the lack of professional manpower. Schools are still mostly analogue while digital competences are key to the current and future labour market (Raport Cyfrowa Diagnoza Szkolna 2017 - a Polish study analysing the use of technology in Polish schools - https://www.librus.pl/2017/10/12/polecamy-raport-z-najwiekszego-badania-cyfryzacji-szkol/).

The labour market is changing drastically. The concept of Lifelong Learning (LLL), known for years, is becoming obsolete because lifelong development is not enough anymore to compete on the labour market. All of the studies on labour market trends indicate that current students will have to change their profession several times during their lifetime as a result of the dynamics of development in particular industries and the fluctuating workplaces and professions. Important factors that shape the labour market and education are the advancing digitalization and work automation. Around 40%-60% of workplaces are going to be replaced by robots by 2030. This means that the need for employees performing manual, repetitive jobs decreases, and the need for creative and innovative employees who are able not only to control the work of robots but also design it or create innovations with the use of robotics, etc. increases. That is why social and economic need for graduates is changing its direction. We need creative, innovative people who are unconventional thinkers. This change applies not only to discoverers, scientists, researchers but to all professions, even those which are not instantly associated with such a need, e.g. hairdressers, mechanics, drivers or nail artists. We already have robots that replace these professions to a large extent or as a whole. In principle, only outstanding, unconventional and authorial actions are not possible to be replaced by an automatic machine, and this change will dynamically advance in the coming years. Competences that were deemed crucial are becoming obsolete, and soon they will stop being relevant due to developing digitization - mainly due to the development of artificial intelligence. For example, communicating in foreign languages will be possible through automatic translators-dictionaries working in real-time. That is why the world needs new competences that are not possible to pass on to students in a schematic way, relying on class-based model of education that strictly divides the subjects and utilizes testing systems. Future Skills 2020 report gives six drivers of change that influence the labour market and create the need for developing other competences than the ones we were focusing on so far. These drivers, according to the authors, are:

• ageing populations and increasing lifespan of an average person

• smart systems and machines entering the market (artificial intelligence)

• the development of new global communication tools (social media)

• an unprecedented increase in the amount of information produced (computerization of the world)

• the expansion of global corporations (that is, Google, Twitter, etc.)

• increased number of networks on different levels of economic, political, and social life.

The report points to 6 drivers of change that will influence the development of society in the coming years: extreme longevity, rise of smart machines and systems, computational world, new media ecology, superstructured organisations, globally connected world. The report also provides 10 competences of the future that students should master. These are: cross-cultural competency, cognitive load management, sense-making, social intelligence, virtual collaboration, computational thinking, adaptive abilities, design mindset, transdisciplinarity, new-media literacy. The book “The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrow’s Employees Today” points to 10 key factors that characterize the new labour market. These factors are:

1. Demographic change

By the end of this decade, around year 2020, for the first time in the history, five generations of employees might be working with each other in one workplace. The authors describe the generations as: the traditionalists (born before year 1946), so called baby boomers (born between 1946-64), generation X (born between 1965-76), millennials (born between 1977-97), and generation 2020 (born after year 1997).

2. The knowledge economy

The authors explain that in year 2020 companies in the USA will employ twice as many creative thinkers than people who just repeat activities.

3. Globalization

Simplicity of outsourcing and distance employment causes change in local and global structure of employment.

4. Digital workplace

Digital information in the professional and private life is becoming more and more important. New IT platforms and protocols are emerging, and the matters of personal and company data safety are gaining in significance.

5. The ubiquity of mobile technology

There is an increasing emphasis on independent search for useful data and establishing and maintaining connections from any place in the world. The authors present the examples of Bank of America, Invitrogen and Wachovia as companies that implement distance training platforms with the use of smartphones.

6. A culture of connectivity

The authors use this term to describe the need for a constant connection to the Internet in order to fulfil official duties, meet social needs, seek information, and improve competences.

7. The participation society

This term was used to describe a society that is characterized by flourishing cooperation and sharing of knowledge.

8. Social learning

It is a process strongly integrated with the development of new technologies, such as peer-to-peer communicators, social networking sites, videoblogs, and platforms dedicated to e-learning.

9. Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

Reflects rising importance of non-financial impact of companies on society.

10. Millennials in the workplace

those are employees that expect a completely different work integration than the previous generations[1]

The above-mentioned drivers of social changes and changes on labour market as well as the definitions of the competences of the future demonstrate that throughout decades curricula or even whole educational systems were designed to meet the needs of labour market. We currently prepare students to professions that do not exist. It is difficult to establish professions will our current students end up doing. That is why they should be equipped with a set of competences of the future, of which the two most important groups are social and digital competences. After observing the development trends in the world, it can be said that these two groups are intermingling and complete each other.

The world is a coherent whole, the same way as education is a coherent whole. None of us goes outside, looks at a tree and says: “This is a tree, so that is science” or “the sky is blue, so that is art.” We perceive and interpret the world holistically and we deal with various tasks, challenges that life presents us with, both in our private and professional life, in the same way.

Therefore, current division into school subjects does not reflect the natural way in which humans understand the world. Isolating concepts, knowledge, information, standards, grades, and practical activities is an immense disruption of the typical way in which students learn and understand the world. It also negatively affects the opportunity of improving the world through innovation in its broadest sense.

Education faces many challenges. However, in the context of the industrial revolution and the needs of employers, the most important of them are:

• Make Polish education system respond to the changing needs of the labour market by ensuring the holistic development of students.

• Improve digitalization of Polish schools.

• Introduce ways of improving social and digital competences into schools.

• Promote vocational and technical training among primary school students.

• Ensure the quality of vocational and technical schools.

• Increase the quantity of skilled manual workers and technical-engineering personnel.

We need to reflect these natural processes in future competence education. We need to “open the door” to the real world and place the same practices in our teaching and learning systems. One way to prepare students for the new realities of the labour market is through STEAM.

The current worldwide trend in education is the STEAM approach. It is a method that have been developing over the past 20 years that connects didactic processes of five main areas: science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. It places the student in a role of a researcher, discoverer, designer, and executor who uses science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics to create own solutions, projects, and innovations. In STEAM model students work creatively, take risks, get involved in experimental learning, solve problems, cooperate, have opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them. Learning in STEAM model takes on the form of developing individual talents of each student and simultaneously developing both social and professional competences. STEAM is currently the most developed approach to teaching competences of the 21st century - as such it also needs tools for the 21st century (tablet, computer, robots, integrated circuits, Internet of Things [IoT], 3D printers, interactive whiteboards, plotters, etc.)

Footnotes

[1] http://www.pi.gov.pl/PARP/chapter_86199.asp?soid=C8A49387D2884B7B80AA8E3099BE0199

About Authors

Marlena Plebańska – Precursor of the Polish e-education, specialising in knowledge management, e-learning and Design Thinking. Warsaw Technical University , North East Wales Institute of Higher Education and Warsaw School of Economics graduate. Expert in the field of distance learning as well as the usage of new media in education. Leader of Polish e-learning. Author of over one hundred science publications and several dozens of popular science publications in the field of e-education. From 17 years and inspirer, designer and strategist of e-learning solutions as well as knowledge management in many Polish enterprises, schools and NGOs. Leader and consultant of educational and e-learning projects. An active trainer and lecturer. A researcher in the Warsaw University, Vistula University.

More information:
www.marlenaplebanska.com
www.steampolska.pl
www.ekstra-klasa.pl
e-mail: marlenaplebanska@hotmail.com

Katarzyna Trojańska – Founder of Extra Class - the first Polish digi school in home education - a place where happy children can develop the competences of the future with the support of new technologies. Previously, a teacher and a vice director in a primary school. Author of numerous pedagogical innovations and an innovative concept of open education. Propagator of STEAM education. Author of publications, including the magazine "Sygnał", "Mam Dziecko w Szkole", "Meritum". Educator on multidirectional education (pedagogical therapist, special educator, oligophrenopedagogist, neuropedagogist, glottodidactics, early childhood education teacher). Has been actively working with children for 11 years.