STEM Education has no gender discretion

STEM Education is for young women and young men. There is an increasing need for each gender to work in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Educators are making efforts to keep girls and boys equally engaged through the middle and high school years. With these successful efforts we will likely see equal representation in the STEM field growing and increasing over the next several years.

Sadly, Microsoft released at statistic that states only 6.7 % of girls graduate with STEM education degrees. However, local industries are trying to turn this around and in very creative ways that capture youth during their curious years of wonder. A woman pilot with Southwest Airlines, teaching young 5th grade students about flight travel, was quoted to say, “doing your best and achieving your dreams has little to do with gender”. Bumps in the road with learning in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math seem to rise around the middle school years when young women are seeing role models on the internet and covers of fashion magazines, instead of in a cockpit of a passenger airline or programming a robot for Amazon! The STEM movement is craving new mentor participants that can lend their skills to educate and stimulate our youth! Role models that work with youth early on could be the key to keeping young women especially engaged in STEM, and in to upper educational pathways. Monica Crowder, a Kyrene Unified School District STEM official, was quoted in a youtube interview. She said, “we must start young, and in STEM we are finding a leaky pipeline”; meaning we need to plug the holes so not one escapes that has the capacity to assimilate STEM. She even suggested girls, at this age, may even be “smarter” than their counterparts.

In-Position Technologies, an Engineering Services Company, also sees this wave of STEM and recently brought an Educational Robot, Dobot, to the US Educational market. It has been said that we need to do a lot more to help children enjoy science in school. For this reason alone, In-Position Technologies has created curriculum that uses RENi, a Robotic Educational Navigational Interface friend; with a smiling face, yellow HDMI cables for her ponytail hair, and challenges youth with her humorous style of learning robotic manipulation, coding, and STEM, all while meeting Educational Standards.

The wave of STEM Education, is crashing into the popular classroom nationwide, and we must capture young minds of both sexes through technology that encourages creativity, adds diversity, allows students to work collaboratively to solve problems all the while gaining self-confidence. While Dobot is a robot that uses different end of arm tools to teach students 3D printing, laser engraving, pick and place along with learning Blockly coding; it also combines lessons that offer learning for different learning modalities that appeal to both genders and across several age groups. For example, some activities/lessons use Physics with Newton’s 3rd Law and 3D printing; another incorporates Gummy Bears to shed Light with absorption and reflection, while the advanced lessons teach students how to learn Blockly Coding with different incorporated standards and activities to match them.

Technology in the marketplace is ready to absorb students with skills in the field of STEM. It knows no boundary but an educated mind from a dedicated student to a valuable employee. The benefits to the larger community are endless when schools take the time to invest in students as a whole, both young women and young men. When tools like Dobot are brought to the classroom and used by girls and boys, both are engaged in STEM learning! This is the education that will catapult their careers, as students, into becoming the employees of tomorrow!