STEAM Equity: Background and Project Goals
STEAM Equity: Background and Project Goals
Project Overview
With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Space Science Institute's National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL/SSI), the American Library Association (ALA), Twin Cities PBS (TPT), Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI) and Education Development Center (EDC) welcome the staff from 12 rural libraries and their community collaborators to the STAR Net STEAM Equity Project.
Our vision is for participating rural communities to:
- Empower tweens and their families around equitable STEAM learning and career paths by leveraging their existing strengths, interests, and diverse cultures.
With the support of the project team, participating public library workers will:
- Collaborate and co-create gender-equitable STEAM exploration pathways* with community leaders (especially those serving Latinx populations) and youth.
- Actively encourage tweens and their families to engage and persist in STEAM explorations in the library and beyond.
- Grow in their ability to work with community collaborators to initiate and sustain STEAM learning opportunities for female and Latinx populations.
Together, participating library partners and project leadership will:
- Learn how library workers can more effectively support tween interest and persistence in STEAM learning in their rural communities.
- Share what we are discovering about STEAM learning and community collaboration with library workers, educators, and those in STEAM-related professions.
*To help each community develop their own unique STEAM exploration pathways, all participating libraries will develop and maintain: 1) STEAM exploration spaces, 2) active STEAM learning programs, and 3) STEAM outreach kits. Each library will host interactive traveling exhibitions and be provided with online resources to generate excitement and ideas from the community.
The STEAM Equity Project includes the following components:
Exhibitions
The three traveling STEAM exhibitions will include games, stations for patrons to create their own creative content, videos, and information designed to engage tweens and their families in self-expression and self-improvement, creative problem solving, and curiosity. Exhibitions will be in Spanish and English.
Each exhibit will require approximately 400 square feet of space, which are publicly accessible in a high traffic area and prominently displayed, as outlined in the STEAM Equity Guidelines under which the library’s application was submitted. Tour timeframes will be established in collaboration with selected libraries in early 2021 to better respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The exhibits are:
Celebrate the benefits and applications of STEAM in our personal lives through the exhibit and games, science tools, and interactives. STEAM content areas will range from design and expression, to athletics, to food, and to safety and security.
- Somos Super Creativ@s: Resolvemos, ingeniamos, construimos/ We’re Super Creative: We solve, build, engineer
Apply iterative design, art, technology, and teamwork through the exhibit and engineering design challenges. STEAM content areas will consider everyday challenges relating to building and sustaining communities, and celebrate the innovators and innovations tackling those challenges.
- Soy Super Curious@: Observo, exploro, pregunto / I’m Super Curious: I observe, explore, wonder
Inspire wonder and curiosity through the exhibit and observations of our world and the universe. STEAM content areas will include phenomena that can be observed in our daily lives – such as the night sky, weather, oceanography, and animals – and opportunities to explore further through citizen science.
STEAM Exploration Spaces
Community Dialogues
Audiences
Our vision is for participating rural communities to empower tweens and their families around equitable STEAM learning and career paths by leveraging their existing strengths, interests, and diverse cultures. This includes collaborating and co-creating gender-equitable STEAM exploration pathways* with community leaders (especially those serving Latinx populations) and youth, actively encourage tweens and their families to engage and persist in STEAM explorations in the library and beyond, and grow in their ability to work with community collaborators to initiate and sustain STEAM learning opportunities for female and Latinx populations.
Next Page: STEAM Equity: Programming Requirements
