Using talkSTEM Resources During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Our resources have always leveraged videos and other activities which are distributed digitally and are designed to be used by parents at home, or by educators who are teaching remotely or in the classroom. Our talkSTEM Learning Suite provides access to a wide-range of free instructional materials including our YouTube channel containing 300+ short, easily digested videos, interactive student activity sheets, digital games, and more. We leverage real world environments so that students, teachers and families can be creative, work collaboratively, observe what is around them, and learn. All our activities involve student-observation of their own spaces, wherever they might be, and do not require purchase of kits or manipulatives. We invite children of all ages, working independently or with parents, families, or friends to participate. We also invite all educators be they classroom teachers, out-of-school educators or parents to utilize our platform, particularly our Create Your Own walkSTEM program in order to engage the children they work with. As an example, watch this video playlist contributed by Dr. Candace Walkington, Math Education Professor at SMU.

In addition, our team has worked intensively to add to our collection of freely accessible resources. Our Virtual Math and Science Festival, together with the freely downloadable student passport, our on-line scavenger hunts, the Watch This-Do That series of games, and our choice boards for teachers and parents, are all examples of resources we made during the pandemic, with a goal of providing turn-key, ready to go resources during these challenging times. All of these resources are freely accessible in the talkSTEM Learning Suite.

As young children are at home with little interaction with friends or classmates, we believe that it is critically important for them to have opportunities to get creative and to work collaboratively. For this reason, we have created a detailed educator guide for our Create Your Own walkSTEM program in the hope that teachers and out-of-school educators will be able to utilize our frameworks and methods to impact the children they work with. For information on obtaining a copy, click here.