STEM Grant from Nuclear Waste Management Ontario Will Help Huron-Perth Catholic District School Board Deliver Learning Opportunities within Huron County Schools
by Bob Montgomery
The Huron-Perth Catholic District School Board has been awarded a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) grant from Nuclear Waste Management Ontario aimed at fostering science, skilled trades, and STEM learning opportunities within Huron County schools.
Huron-Perth Catholic District School Board’s Information, Communication and Technology Learning Coordinator Jenna Meyers says the grant means if they come up with a project or something they particularly want to work on with their students, they can apply for funding to help support that. Meyers submitted applications on behalf of all seven of their Huron County elementary schools and all seven applications were successful. She says the funding will be used for the development of coding skills and the use of robotics in their elementary science programming.
Meyers says the grants allowed them to buy LEGO Spike Education Kits that will give the students the opportunity to write and execute code in different investigations when they're modelling concepts. She says the main projects they've been taking around to classes have involved coding and building a car or driving base that uses sensors to keep it on the road or on a track. She says they're also able to code the driving bases to stop at a certain distance, just as cars can with an automatic brake sensor. Meyers says the first projects are aimed at the automotive industry but she says they're also trying to direct some of the projects towards the Skills Ontario competition. She says they had students compete last year in the robotics competition and they're hoping to do that again this year.
Meyers says in addition to the LEGO Spike Prime Kits, there are grant facilitated workshops for Grade 7 and 8 classes delivered by the University of Waterloo Engineering Outreach Program. Those workshops serve as a valuable supplement to the curriculum, offering students the opportunity to engage with real-world engineering challenges and encouraging them to explore potential career paths in STEM fields
