Full STEAM Ahead! – the full name of the project is “Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics in the 2nd Primary School in Varaždin” is a project aimed at establishing the first STEAM primary school in the Varaždin County.
During this project, the 2nd Primary School in Varaždin will undergo digital transformation through the STEAM concept, by equipping four classrooms (including an observatory), providing comprehensive teacher education, developing curriculum and activities for students. The acronym STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) which includes art in addition to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is a relatively new concept that aims to integrate STEM subjects with art subjects in various relevant educational disciplines. Such programs are designed to teach students innovation, critical thinking and to use engineering or technology in imaginative design or creative approaches to real-world problems, building on mathematical and scientific foundations for students.
The project leader is the 2nd Primary School in Varaždin, and the partners in the project are the Faculty of Organization and Informatics at the University of Zagreb and NT Gruppen AS from the Kingdom of Norway.
The project is financed within the “Strengthening STEM skills in primary schools and development of regional scientific centers for primary education and education in STEM field” call from the EEA and Norway Financial Mechanisms for the period 2014-2021. The total value of the project is 444,143.34 EUR.
The implementation period is from July 1, 2022 to March 31, 2024 (total duration 21 months).
The project results will include the following:
- Improving infrastructure and equipment in classrooms (4 classrooms for 4 new and upgraded educational programs related to STEAM will be equipped and transformed – game design classroom, robotics classroom, 3D printing classroom, and astronomy observatory classroom).
- Improving STEAM competencies of teachers in the use of modern teaching methods, ICT, entrepreneurship, and active citizenship in their daily teaching (6 specialized workshops for teachers related to modern teaching methods, use of ICT in education, e-learning planning, STEM, gamification, artificial intelligence, and conversational agents will be organized by consortium partners).
- Improving STEAM competencies of students by introducing advanced technology and modern teaching methods (teachers of the school will organize at least 9 gamified workshops at all levels of education with specially developed cognitive agents and augmented reality systems for various subjects related to STEM areas).
- Empowering students with special educational needs by developing new and improved curricula (during the project, 4 extracurricular educational programs will be piloted with specially developed learning materials for potentially gifted or students with special educational needs. Teachers developing these programs will be mentored by partner experts in relevant areas. These programs will become a part of the school curriculum by the end of the project).
- Teaching students entrepreneurship by organizing classrooms as service providers (new game design classroom will provide teachers with services of implementing educational games, new 3D printing classroom will provide teachers with service of creating didactic aids).
- Teaching students active citizenship by facilitating participation in subject events (one workshop for students will be exclusively related to the field of active citizenship).
- Creating long-term effects by educating teachers as trainers and organizing appropriate trainer training (at least two teachers will undergo training to become trainers and will organize corresponding training for other teachers).
The project manager is the principal of II. Elementary School Varaždin, Sanja Posavec, and the project activities at partner institutions are coordinated by Assoc. Prof. Markus Schatten from the Faculty of Organization and Informatics and Branimir Simic from NT Gruppen AS.
