KIKS Creativity and Technology for All

Abstract

To help meet an educational and societal requirement for all students to enjoy, have confidence and ability in creativity and technology, the “Kids Inspiring Kids in STEAM” (KIKS) EU project adopted an intensive Hothousing process challenging students in Finland, Spain, Hungary and the United Kingdom to engage in collaborative problem solving to develop solutions to: “How would you get your schoolmates to LOVE STEAM?” The project provided a process and technology toolkit for students, including those with special educational needs, to achieve their solutions.

A completion rate of 90% suggested that all schools and students could cope with and enjoy the process and associated technology toolkit, which featured social media plus Micro:bit, Tracker and GeoGebra for data collection and modelling.

We have extended the toolkit with simulation software and a graphical programming environment to produce realistic animations of objects in motion. Thus students will have a creativity and technology toolkit to experience the kinds of techniques and skills used by software engineers in the video, games and special effects industries. The toolkit will be on the GeoGebra platform which, in addition to mathematics, embraces STEAM and social media.