STEM Passport Information

Are your children and/or students 21st-century thinkers and learners? Thinking and learning styles in the last ten years have evolved much more rapidly than the education system has, and the gap continues to grow. This is especially true in the midst of the changes that the response to COVID-19 has inflicted on the education system. Are your children and/or students having student-led educational experiences facilitated for them? These should, at a minimum, have certain characteristics to enhance efficacy. The first is the use of a hands-on (when possible), minds-on approach framed by the learner's prior experiences, knowledge, and current understanding (which all must be determined diagnostically). The second is to incorporate a planned, but flexible method of scaffolding concepts, in context, through experiences that reinforce both breadth and depth of mastery and connectivity over time. The third...is that it must be fun enough for the learner to want to continue the pursuit of learning on their own time! Our kids are drowning in an ocean of information and they often lack the skills needed to process it all. Critical thinking, computational thinking, creative thinking, strategic reasoning, and social-emotional skills should be prioritized and taught explicitly to set the stage for information processing and constructing meaning about the world we live in. STEM Passport uses a gamified learning approach (game thinking and gamification mechanics) that focus on storytelling and narratives to drive long-term engagement and success. The name STEM Passport was chosen because we believe that learning is a journey. Standards are useful as maps, but we must not forget they aren't destinations that must be reached at all costs. Personalized learning is the key to success.