“Previous generations had to find a job. Today our kids will have to invent a job. Every child needs to be innovation ready—knowing how to add value to whatever they do.” –Thomas L. Friedman
I recently heard this quote, and while I thought it profound, I believe that students innately have this mindset. What they need is more tools to practice with. As an example, students have become the creators of innovative AR and VR experiences, not just consumers of it.
The classroom VR technology that we are seeing, from companies like Lenovo and Intel, is flooding the education marketplace. You may be like many educators I speak with and think VR is really amazing, but are struggling to connect the funding and the justification for its placement in the classroom.
Connection® Public Sector Solutions is working with schools like yours daily to help them adopt technology like VR by creating projects that provide innovative research, development, and evaluation of practices aimed at improving STEM teaching and learning. Last month, we hosted a live webcast that discussed this very topic. Here are the grants we discussed that are available from the National Science Foundation:
• Computer Science for All: Funds projects focused on research-practitioner partnerships, which are mutual collaborations intentionally organized to investigate problems of practice and solutions for improving school and district outcomes. Application Deadline: 2/12/2019
• Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers: Funds projects that actively engage business and industry to better ensure K-12 experiences are more likely to foster the skill-sets of emerging STEM and cognate careers. Application Deadline: 8/14/2019
• STEM + Computing Partnerships: Funds research and development of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to the integration of computing within STEM teaching and learning for pre-K–12 students. Open Application
If you’re looking for more tools and resources to help you align the latest classroom technology to evidence-based STEM projects, I encourage you to listen to our recorded webcast. After you do, I would love to hear about what amazing projects you’re looking to fund and what support we may be able to offer you throughout the process.
Penny Conway
Penny has a passion for enabling digital transformation through cloud solutions and services. With a background in managed services for hardware and software across the partner ecosystem, she seeks to break down complex solutions into industry-relevant conversations with customers regardless of where they are on their cloud journey. When she isn’t networking on LinkedIn, or hosting podcasts and webcasts, she really enjoys cooking and having dance parties with her daughter.
