The power of immersive content

Promethean’s most recent State of Technology in Education Report revealed that 71% of teachers believe their workload is harmful to classroom progression. Striving to reduce this workload burden while making teaching with tech easier than ever before, Promethean is forging a series of content partnerships that will make rich resources readily available for use with its award-winning ActivPanel.

The first of these collaborations is with The Learning Partnership and aims to address the STEAM challenge – combining traditional teaching techniques with technology to create engaging lessons. As Promethean’s exclusive UKI STEAM partner, The Learning Partnership develops practical challenges which stimulate student excitement and participation in STEAM lessons.

The Learning Partnership

Focusing on supporting global engagement in STEAM subjects, The Learning Partnership builds and delivers programmes and challenges that help to increase student participation and enjoyment in STEAM by linking classroom experiences to real life.

As Promethean’s exclusive UKI STEAM partner, The Learning Partnership is enhancing its STEAM provisions by showcasing apps and activities that can be designed and engineered on the ActivPanel and replicated in real life to increase engagement within the learning environment. Students are also encouraged to work collaboratively with the potential of competing in challenges on a national scale to showcase their STEAM skills.

Engineering a love of STEAM

One school that has benefited first-hand from The Learning Partnership and Promethean’s collaboration is Four Oaks Primary School in Birmingham. Having recently participated in the ‘Build to the Line’ and ‘Race to the Line’ programmes, Year 5 students at Four Oaks have been putting their engineering and technological skills to the test in the classroom, and even at one of the biggest edtech events in the world – the Bett Show.

Using practical resources and immersive edtech, teachers and pupils at Four Oaks Primary School were able to model and explore physical processes and theories on the Promethean ActivPanel, whilst designing and engineering bridges and rocket powered cars.

Liz Greening, Year 5 Teacher at Four Oaks Primary School, commented: “The pupils thoroughly enjoyed completing the bridge building challenge in class but to then be asked to go to London and take part in the rocket car ‘Race to the Line’ challenge in front of thousands of visitors…well, beyond excitement doesn’t even come close!

“They approached the STEAM challenge at Bett using all the skills they had learned in class and put excellent teamwork into practice. We are all incredibly proud of them and can’t wait to get started on new STEAM challenges back at school.”

By bringing together technology and traditional resources, the Year 5 students thoroughly enjoyed their classroom STEAM activities and showcasing what they learnt on-stand at Bett. One student in particular explained how technology and traditional resources helped to create engaging learning content. “Using the Algodoo app on the ActivPanel we were able to use the sensitive touchscreen to design our car to measure how it would perform in a race on stand. After designing it on the ActivPanel we then built and raced it against the adults on stand and our car won! It was very interesting to see the Bett Show and a lot of fun being on stand with Promethean creating and racing our rocket cars,” commented Daniel, a Year 5 student at Four Oaks Primary School.

Passionate about delivering edtech solutions that support teachers and engage learners in the classroom, Promethean recognises the importance of enhancing classroom technology with content that really makes a difference.

To find out more about Promethean, please visit www.PrometheanWorld.com/gb/, and to learn more about The Learning Partnership and how it supports the wider STEAM integration in schools, please visit www.thelearningpartnership.com.