According to the Project Lead the Way national website, “By 2018, the U.S. will have more than 1.2 million unfilled STEM jobs because there will not be enough qualified workers to fill them. STEM is where jobs are today and where the job growth will be in the future.”
At St. Francis of Assisi, 853 N. Socora in west Wichita, students begin working with iPads and computers in the early grades.
“We have second-graders designing on the computer,” said Mary Carter, the school’s principal. “Third-, fourth- and fifth-graders are doing a lot through robotics.”
The students learn computer codes and programing.
“The biggest thing they learn is problem solving,” Carter said. “They learn the perseverance it takes of going through something and when it becomes a challenge and they hit a brick wall, they learn how to solve it and keep going.
“Then, they have the absolute satisfaction and elation of knowing they did it.”
The students also learn critical thinking. Kyle Krohmer, a middle-school teacher, said students learn to integrate math, engineering principals, design and modeling with science as they move into middle school.
“I try not to show them everything,” Krohmer said. “They learn through trial-and-error exploration.”
Cody Winters, a seventh-grade student, built a realistic-looking iPhone 6.
“I didn’t know what to do, I thought this sounded interesting,” Winters said. “It needs more apps. I don’t have enough apps.”
Ben Gregg, another seventh-grader, built a desk computer, laptop and mouse.
“It was annoying to do this one because everything had to be to scale,” Gregg said. “The mouse took so long. I would say the hardest part was that the tiniest things are the hardest to place.”
Melissa Vogel, a fifth-grade science teacher, says the benefits of the program go beyond class.
“Even if the kids don’t go into science, they are problem solving,” Vogel said. “That can serve them in any field they go into.”
©2015 The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
