Engineering

A few weeks ago, we reviewed the SAM Labs Curious Cars Kit for the Eduporium Experiment and now this week’s edition has the SAM Labs Inventor Kit in store for us! SAM Labs is a British company who’s committed to bringing hands-on STEAM to early education and have created three innovative kits that do just that.

Kids are making and inventing all kinds of incredible gadgets these days and computers are now part of that list. Plus, thanks to products like the pi-top, it’s easier than ever for kids to learn the engineering, explore the technology, and build a device they can actually use, which is something the creators of the pi-top definitely recommend.

Green technology is a great teaching tool, because, in every classroom, no matter its size, economic standing, or location, there’s access to at least one renewable resource. In this week’s Eduporium Experiment, I took a look at Snap Circuits Green, a part of Snap Circuits’ successful line of STEM education tools focused on illustrating alternative energy.

Your kids can learn key computer science skills. They don’t even need the most expensive equipment. They don’t need to be a genius. All they need is a true love for playtime, a knack for creativity, and one of our NEW SAM Labs kits! Coding is the No. 1 skill today’s kids will need to know, so we’ve added these

It’s widely-accepted that robotics education is critical to building 21st century STEM skills because it combines so many essential disciplines depending on what each specific robot can do. I bring up my own history with robotics because it’s very relevant to this week’s post on the Meccano Meccanoid G15KS, one of the more complex STEM robots.

The pi-top isn’t the only build-it-yourself computer on the market these days! As the Maker Movement snowballs in popularity, innovators are starting to wholly buy in to the idea that students need to learn not only in software skills, but hardware skills as well. This is where Piper, the wooden, kid-friendly, DIY laptop kit comes in and shines.

Designed to make engineering fun for girls, Roominate empowers them to control exploration by making them the architect, the engineer, or even the electrician! It’s a neat way to build Future Ready kids while they strengthen design and engineering skills by building cafés, cars, and even brand-new houses! And, we’ve got some new STEAM kits just for that!

Thames and Kosmos makes and distributes over 100 hands-on science kits designed to engage students in high-quliaty STEM learning with real-life experiemnts. For today’s Eduporium Experiment, I looked at one kit in particular: The Robotics Smart Machines set—a 230-piece toolbox designed to teach the basics of engineering and robotics to kids.

Generally, when maker-minded teachers and learners hear ‘Arduino,’ they tend to think of high-level devices you build yourself, write the code for and then program it to execute whatever function it is designed to complete. If you’ve heard of littleBits, however, you know that these electronic building blocks define simplicity.

The meeperBOT is a portable, mobile and intuitive robot that kids can use to learn the basic concepts of programming and robotic behavior. With the meeperBOTS app, students as young as five years old, can control the meeperBOT with a simple, handheld, on-screen remote. Head inside to learn more about it.