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The last few years have been fraught with challenges for teachers, as the needs of students and educational centers change rapidly, and the same speed of adaptation is demanded of them. Due to the evolution of the digitization of classrooms and the fact that STEAM subjects (those in the field of science, technology and mathematics) are becoming a growing priority to provide future guarantees to students, teachers need tools that integrate seamlessly into their classrooms and reinforce results quickly.
LEGO®Education has been developing solutions and resources to support teachers in their work to make the classroom a living space for STEAM subjects and for their students through practical and directed play for more than 40 years. LEGO®Education, through STEAM lessons in line with curriculum content and with the help of LEGO® products, provides students with the opportunity to get to work and re-engage in their learning with interest. What's more, with new EU funding available to schools and educators, it's much easier to incorporate the LEGO® learning system into the classroom.
Right now, teachers and schools are focusing their attention on ensuring that students acquire the STEAM skills needed to integrate into the labor market in the future. According to the Education Commission, it is estimated that, by 2030, more than half of the world's children (800 million) will not have the necessary skills or qualifications to be part of the new working population.
This gap is already being bridged with European funds in a large part of the Spanish territory. However, teachers, and primary school teachers in particular, can feel overwhelmed or lack confidence when they have to teach subjects that are new to them, such as Computer Science, or work on skills such as programming. Classroom time is limited and they are under significant pressure to ensure that they have covered all the core elements of the curriculum. Teachers must find the right methods and tools to teach key concepts in the most engaging way for students.
An easy and proven way to teach STEAM concepts is through a hands-on, playful approach. The LEGO Foundation has observed that, when teachers bring the game into the classroom, it allows students to satisfy the basic human need to express their own imagination, curiosity and creativity, key resources in a world based on knowledge (Unicef, 2018). These experiences are the building blocks of future 21st century skills. Learning through play not only succeeds in developing essential skills: it also promotes meaningful participation, which increases students' motivation and engagement with learning.
In addition to dealing with post-pandemic recovery, the EU emphasizes the need to invest in the future of education in the European framework report for the digital competence of educators: DigCompEdu. This new framework for early childhood educators and all other educational levels focuses on the rapidly evolving demands of the profession. He also emphasizes that, in order to use digital technologies in the classroom, educators should first have confidence in their own abilities.
Promoting this self-confidence among educators is one of the reasons why LEGO Education has created training courses and tools to put this type of teaching into practice in the classroom and train each teacher to help their students not only to leave of the step, but to progress.
This is accomplished through the use of the LEGO®LearningSystem, an interconnected system of STEAM learning tools for elementary and middle school students. Curriculum-compliant lessons are hands-on and fun and incorporate future-focused skills (such as robotics and programming) that enable students to develop important STEAM skills and rekindle their interest in learning. In LEGOEducation, all the didactic units, ready to be used, are available to teachers for free. With this study-supported learning system, abstract concepts become tangible as students move from simple explorations to increasingly complex real-world challenges.
LEGO®LearningSystem helps ease the added pressure on teachers in today's classrooms to incorporate digital and STEAM skills into their daily classes, providing them with an accessible solution for STEAM learning. Although the idea of bringing robotics or programming into the classroom may seem overwhelming, teachers do not have to be technology experts to apply these solutions. LEGO®LearningSystem is based on content developed on the web or in easily accessible applications that are combined with LEGO® bricks and easily recognizable building elements.
Not only students develop their skills. Teachers will learn effective ways to implement STEAM learning in the classroom with the appropriate level of support. They will be able to contact official LEGOEducation distributors and arrange certified training courses, where they will receive basic knowledge, familiarize themselves with the product and gain hands-on experience. In these instructor-led courses, teachers will master the skills needed to facilitate project-based learning and manage lessons and materials.
In addition to training courses, all LEGO®LearningSystem solutions have materials available online that help teachers guide their students in each lesson, awakening their creativity and critical thinking. This focus on professional development allows teachers to feel more confident in their own STEAM abilities because LEGOEducation is with them every step of the way. If we have teachers with confidence, we can educate students with self-confidence.
Although teachers have to take on the task of teaching increasingly complex and digital curriculum content, LEGOEducation provides an easy and perfect way to bring STEAM concepts into the classroom. Thanks to the popularity of the LEGO brick and the abundant online and support resources available to teachers, it will take very little time for STEAM learning to materialize in the classroom
