A new Canadian EdTech startup – Forward Education – is setting out to make climate change education mainstream with their Climate Action Kits for teaching coding and robotics in K-12 classrooms.
The kits help students and educators understand and create prototypes of real-world technology solutions to climate change issues while advancing STEM education.
“The wildfires raging across Canada are a warning signal for what our future looks like without taking action against climate change. The technology solutions exist today to tackle these challenges head on, but we need generations of inspired youth to help create a brighter future,” said the startup CEO Jeremy Hedges.
The Climate Action Kits make the process of teaching and learning coding easy, exciting and purposeful for students and teachers alike. Using the online interactive lessons, students are introduced to a variety of climate change issues and their technological solutions.
Students then use the kit’s hardware, building blocks and physical computing components to code and build their own working prototypes by following step-by-step coding tutorials. These projects can be as simple as creating a windmill for renewable energy or as challenging as building an automated tree seeding vehicle to combat deforestation.
Powered by the BBC micro:bit and Microsoft’s MakeCode software, the Forward Education team has developed a learning system for coding and robotics. Teachers with no prior experience can pick up a kit today and start teaching in their classrooms tomorrow – it’s remarkably simple for something that can seem so daunting.
The Climate Action Kits will officially launch at the ISTELIVE ‘23 education technology conference in Philadelphia in June where the team hopes to bring coding and climate action education together around the world.
The Forward Education team believes that by teaching these skills and contextualizing STEM with real-world climate action opportunities, teachers can give students hope for the future and inspire them to be tomorrow’s changemakers.
By Correspondent
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