Educando participates in the STEM TechCamp in São Paulo
On Wednesday, February 13, Marcos Paim, Director of Educando’s program STEM Brasil, participated in a panel on STEM actions in public education during the STEM TechCamp Brazil event in São Paulo.
Paim was the only representative of an NGO, presenting STEM Brasil, alongside Allan de Almeida Giangrossi (Qualcomm Marketing Director), Juliana Nobre (IBM Corporate Citizenship Manager), Matheus Pereira (Microsoft Learning Deployment Specialist), and Liliane Rodrigues (3M Institute Coordinator of Social Projects) as facilitator of the panel.
The attendees were represented by public school principals from all 27 Brazilian states.They were very enthusiastic about STEM Brasil, specifically the program’s dimension and impact in Brazil. Launched in 2009, STEM Brasil is an intensive training program for public school science and math teachers. It has expanded in 17 Brazilian states, training more than 6,200 teachers from 724 schools, having an impact in over 570 thousand students.
According to Paim, what is taught in the classroom needs to make sense in the student’s life. “Otherwise, students come out thinking, ‘I’m never going to use this’,” he explained. This is the role of STEM Brasil, through its own methodology, which emphasizes hands-on learning, the program gives life to the mandatory curriculum of science and math, facilitating the learning process.
The STEM TechCamp Brazil 2019 program will last 12 months and aims to offer innovative tools for teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics for educators serving the public basic and technical education. It is an initiative of the United States Diplomatic Mission in Brazil in partnership with the Technological Integral Systems Laboratory and support from Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (USP), +Unidos Group, and the National Council of Education Secretaries.
Between 11th and 15th of February, STEM TechCamp offered an immersion week at USP, where educators had activities with the TechCamp teams from Washington and experts selected by USP, lectures with educational and entrepreneurship leaders, group discussions, design thinking activities and the creation of the Strategic Planning proposals for implementation in their school communities.
