Explore Interactive partners with Boston museum, enhancing STEM education

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. − Purdue Research Park-based company, Explore Interactive, recently partnered with Museum of Science Boston's "Engineering is Elementary" team to bring STEM learning to elementary school students.

Augmented reality and MindLabs

Explore Interactive creates augmented reality-based educational experiences that students as young as elementary school-age can use to learn more about STEM.

"We creating an augmented reality learning platform for STEM (for) elementary ages," Amanda Thompson, CEO of Explore Interactive, said. "We're targeting the engineering-learning."

MindLabs by Explore Interactive are handy kits for teachers to utilize in their classrooms. Within the kits are 20 cards for students to utilize. The cards depict items that relate to the topic of each kit. For the Energy and Circuits MindLab, the cards depict Anne, one of the MindLabs characters, a fan, a switch, a battery and a mystery option.

By using the MindLabs Energy and Circuits app on an iPad, students can point their tablet at the cards, which will cause the items on the cards to virtually appear and be manipulated. Students can spawn multiple fans and switches to orient circuits in many different ways to learn how they work. An additional aspect of the app includes teaching kids safely what happens when a circuit shorts out with simulated fire.

"In the app, when you use it, there's a couple different things they do," Thompsonsaid, referring to the cards. "This is out first content unit, so it's around circuits...In (the app) you can actually have multiple people doing it together. These little cards (become animated on screen) to explain what circuits are and what they do. But then you can also build things."

Thompson explained the detriments of real-world circuits as opposed to those that can be built in the app: small lights on circuits that are necessary to determine if the circuit is working burn out easily, actual shocks can be experienced by the kids. With the app, multiple students can work on the same project together when not in the same room together as long as they are connected to Wi-Fi.

Thompson also explained the importance of early childhood STEM education for young students.

"One of the things about growing a STEM workforce, which is really important to society in general, is getting (STEM education) started earlier, like in elementary school," Thompson said. "Kids are really establishing an identity around what they like to do as early as (elementary age). And if they haven't even seen or worked on stuff like this, they just don't take that path. And we just need more kids taking those paths."

Engineering is Elementary and Explore Interactive

Engineering is Elementary (EiE) is a curricula division of the Museum of Science, Boston, that has recently joined forces with Explore Interactive to bring more MindLabs to more elementary students.

"EiE is a curriculum set for engineering," Thompson said. "And it is the most well regarded (curriculum division). And we are working with them on developing a unit that brings their curriculum together with our augmented reality. So they have a bunch of the physicals (kits of circuit boards) that do things like this, but they're interested in taking their approach and giving an option for the augmented reality.

"There's lots of good reasons for that," Thompson continued. "First of all, in some international arenas, kids entire educational tools are the iPad and they have nothing else. So we can reach a whole lot more students if you need a set of cards and an iPad rather than (a physical circuit board kit)."

Reaching schools that have less funding and less time focused on STEM educations were further reasons Thompson discussed regarding the benefits of MindLabs.

STEM education importance

Thompson delved further into the benefits of not just receiving a STEM education, but starting that education very early in childhood.

"There's lots of research around the earlier start," Thompson said. "I think the number that I was just looking at is something like, by fourth grade, (about) 80% of students have had almost no hands-on STEM (experience)…Kids that identify with it earlier do better as well."

The Learning Experience website backs this statement up by explaining how STEM encourages children's natural curiosity, invites them to ask open-ended questions and allows them to use creative outlets such as art to segue into the STEM field.

The present and future of MindLabs

Explore Interactive's MindLabs kits are currently incorporated into some Indiana classrooms already. According to Thompson, Yorktown Community Schools in Yorktown, IN has had the most prevalent incorporation of these kits into its elementary classrooms.

However, further incorporation more locally, such as in Lafayette, is on the agenda for Explore Interactive.

"STEM Education Works, it's a company that's actually out of Lafayette," Thompson said, "that distributes stuff like this. And we're going to be piloting with them to several different schools and after-school programs.

Future ventures for Explore Interactive includes a new MindLabs kit that focuses on movement of objects on various shapes such as ramps, pendulums, springs and more.

"Our next big release is going to have more stuff around actually documenting," Thompson said. "So helping kids go through the engineering design process, which translates to everything in life."

The Energy and Circuit MindLabs kit is currently available for purchase and use in classrooms at ExploreMindLabs.com starting at $24.99.

"I think there's a lot of cool things on this front," Thompson said. "I think that the best, new and innovative educational materials are going to be utilizing (augmented reality) because it gives (students) a chance to get their hands on stuff that they can't get their hands on otherwise."

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Explore Interactive is making STEM educations more available