The STEM of Stuff (exploring the science, technology, engineering & math of everyday things)
There has been much discussion about the need to improve STEM education in the U.S. However, those discussions rarely include information on the value of family and parent involvement. Research has shown that parental encouragement & engagement has a positive impact on children's interest & achievement in STEM. "The STEM of Stuff "(TSOS) program aims to give parents an achievable way to get involved in their child's STEM education. This is particularly important in low-income communities where parental perceptions, attitudes, & lack of access to resources can be obstacles to involvement. TSOS is built around our belief that educational improvement can be achieved by giving educators, parents, & the community an understanding of the value of collaboration, and the means & tools to do so.
About You
About You
First Name
Barbara
Last Name
Sprung
About Your Organization
Organization Name
Educational Equity Center, a division of fhi360
Organization Website
Organization Phone
212-243-1110
Organization Address
100 Fifth Avenue, 8th Floor, New York, NY 10011
Organization Country
United States, NY, New York County
Country where this project is creating social impact
United States, XX
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has your organization been operating?
More than 5 years
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Innovation
Entry Form title
The STEM of Stuff (exploring the science, technology, engineering & math of everyday things)
What change do you want to bring to the world?
There has been much discussion about the need to improve STEM education in the U.S. However, those discussions rarely include information on the value of family and parent involvement. Research has shown that parental encouragement & engagement has a positive impact on children's interest & achievement in STEM. "The STEM of Stuff "(TSOS) program aims to give parents an achievable way to get involved in their child's STEM education. This is particularly important in low-income communities where parental perceptions, attitudes, & lack of access to resources can be obstacles to involvement. TSOS is built around our belief that educational improvement can be achieved by giving educators, parents, & the community an understanding of the value of collaboration, and the means & tools to do so.
What are the primary activities of your project?
The core of The STEM of Stuff (TSOS) is a Facebook Page that serves as an online community/resource center and disseminates activities, geared towards 3-10 year olds, illustrating how STEM is part of everything we use and interact with in everyday life.
The program is based on our Science: It's A Girl Thing (S:IGT) initiative, which targeted mostly pre-school through first graders. S:IGT was created with funding from The National Science Foundation and ran for three years. Although the program was Facebook-based we also used additional social media channels (Twitter and You Tube) to help create awareness of the program and engage with potential users. In a survey of users, conducted for our final NSF report, parents and educators gave the program high marks, but there was also a high level of interest in creating more activities, targeting boys as well as girls, and adding activities for older children.
TSOS activities will be written for teachers, and be available as downloadable pdf files on the Facebook Page. Each activity will include a teaching guide as well as information on the STEM concept being illustrated. To help illustrate the range of STEM-based professions, the activities will also feature special tips and information, relevant to the activity, from "guest experts," i.e., professionals in STEM fields. Also included will be a short description of the guest expert's profession (i.e., architect) and a short bio, along with photos of their work.
There will be downloadable "follow-up" activities for parents to do with their children. The "follow-up" activities will reference the school-based activity, as well as the tips from the "guest expert." This gives parents a stake in the process, and the online community will enable them to interact with each other and with teachers in the community.
What is innovative about your initiative? How is it a new contribution to the field?
Students in low-income communities face numerous educational achievement challenges, among them: their schools are typically under-funded & understaffed; educators are more likely to have low expectations in their abilities; lack of parental involvement that might stem from a belief that education is strictly an in-school function; lack of access to supplementary education resources; a lack of exposure to the world/environment/opportunities outside of their immediate neighborhood. In the aggregate, these challenges create a formidable obstacle.
School age children spend 70% of their waking hours (including weekends & holidays) outside of school so programs offering solutions that only target the in-school environment have a more difficult time achieving success. But, implementing a successful program that incorporates educators, the community, and parents, can be an expensive proposition, requiring extensive communication & coordination between the three groups.
With S:IGT, we discovered that social media can be a very effective and low-cost way to communicate with parents, educators, & the community, as well as a way to generate a community of common interest where program users can interact with us, as well as with each other. More importantly, a report by BIG Research, an online marketing company, 54.2% of all Hispanics online and 47.7% of all African Americans online regularly use Facebook. Using social media as the primary communication channel has the additional benefit of being a familiar & less intimidating environment for parents.
What stage is your project in?
Idea phase
Tell us about the community that you engage? eg. economic conditions, political structures, norms and values, demographic trends, history, and experience with engagement efforts.
Twenty-seven years ago,Educational Equity Center developed the first nonsexist, multicultural, and inclusive educational curriculum. Since then, co-founders, Merle Froschl and Barbara Sprung have continued to develop programming to address those issues, focusing on STEM subjects, including:Playtime is Science a science education/parent involvement program for grades K-3 that was recognized as a "Promising Gender Equity Program" by the U.S. Department of Education; After-School Science Plus, a program to engage students ages 6 to 14 in inquiry-based science during out of school time; After-School Math Plus a collaboration between afterschool centers and local science museums where students engage in fun, real-world mathematics activities; and Great Science for Girls a five-year initiative enable afterschool centers to deliver programming to broaden and sustain girls’ interest and persistence in STEM.
Share the story of the founder and what inspired the founder to start this project
The vision of EEC co-founders Merle Frochl and Barbara Sprung are best described in their own words: “When we co-founded EEC, we didn’t know much about running a nonprofit organization. But we did know what was needed: a way to address inequality in education on all fronts–gender, race/ethnicity, disability, and level of family income– beginning with the youngest learners. Over the last 25 years, what began as a vision of equity, and a commitment to pursue it against all odds, has resulted in a body of work that will outlast us.“
For the past 4 years, Linda Ziskind, a social media consultant and former educator, has been working with EEC in developing their online initiatives. Linda was instrumental in creating the concept for Science: It's a Girl Thing and helping EEC modify materials from their Playtime is Science program for the project. Linda began her teaching career, by choice, at Grimke Elementary School, an inner-city school in Washington D.C., where she witnessed first-hand the damage caused by inequality in education. Although many years out of the teaching profession, she still maintains a strong interest in education equity.
Social Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Please describe how your project has been successful and how that success is measured
Although we haven't yet launched The STEM of Stuff we can offer the results of Science: It's a Girl Thing as a comparable. Because success measurement in social media is still a developing science, particularly in the years (2009-2011) that the project was live, we aggregated usage statistics as well as tracked functionality that was measurable in order to arrive at a results summary. Our measurements included: Facebook Page Insight Data; Activity download statistics, Twitter account data; and an analysis using Klout, a social media influence measurement tool that tracks and analyzes data from Facebook and Twitter to arrive at scores that indicate the size of your engaged audience, the likelihood that your content will generate actions, and the indication of the level of influence over your engaged audience.
At the end of the S:IGT initiative, we had aggregated over 3,000 fans and, of those fans, averaged 1,500 monthly active users. Our target audience was parents and/or caregivers between 25 and 55 years old and, of our fans, 40% were in that bracket. Our Facebook wall posts averaged close to 20,000 monthly views with 67% post feedback. Over the course of the program, there were over 7,000 activity card downloads. Our Twitter account aggregated 725 followers, most of whom were actively engaged parents, educators, and science professionals. Additionally, our Twitter account was put on 78 Twitter lists about science and education, with 92 other Twitter users following those lists, which gave us an aggregate exposure to tens of thousands of Twitter users interested in girls' science education
How many people have been impacted by your project?
1,001- 10,000
How many people could be impacted by your project in the next three years?
More than 10,000
How will your project evolve over the next three years?
Our goal is to see TSOS used in low-income communities throughout the U.S. Although, though its online dissemination, it will be available nationally at launch, we'd like to be able to contact and work with individual communities (whether in person, or virtually) to help communicate the value of the program.
Sustainability
What barriers might hinder the success of your project and how do you plan to overcome them?
Approximately 200 words left (1600 characters)
Tell us about your partnerships
EEC has partnered with many educational and STEM-focused organizations in developing programs. Most often, partnership were with other division in our parent organization, such as the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research, but we have also partnered with, the New York Hall of Science, the St. Louis Science Center, the Association for Science Technology Centers, and the National Training Institute for Community Youth Work.
Current annual budget of project, in US dollars
Please select
Explain your selections
EEC projects are typically funded by government and foundation grants and our plan has been to pursue those kinds of grants for TSOS. However, the rise in popularity and effectiveness of crowd-funding services, such as KickStarter, and mobile payments/donations gives us alternative avenues of support.
How do you plan to strengthen your project in the next three years?
TSOS will continue to add activities and strengthen the collaborative connections between educators, parents, and the community. Because this is a internet based project, we know that there will be technology advances we can't yet predict. We saw this happen with S:IGT where we found ourselves riding the wave of technology developments and, through them, finding ways of improving and growing the project.
Partnerships and Accountability
Please tell us more about how your partnership was formed and how it functions. What specific role does each partner play? What unique resources does each partner bring to the initiative?
For the past 4 years, Linda Ziskind, a social media consultant and former educator, has been working with EEC in developing their online initiatives. Linda was instrumental in creating the concept for Science: It's a Girl Thing and helping EEC modify materials from their Playtime is Science program, as well as elements from their library of other programs, for the project. This relationship will continue for the TSOS project.
How are you building in accountability for students' successful STEM learning outcomes? Please provide a summary and examples.
Needs
Investment.
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add needs that may not be listed.
Offers
Please use this space to elaborate on your selection above and/or to add offers that may not be listed.
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