THE FIRST STEM-CENTERS HAVE BEEN OPENED IN BORISOV AND BORISOV DISTRICT
On the 9thof April the STEM-centers were opened on the basis of the Secondary School No. 24 in Borisov and the agrarian town Loschnitsa (Borisov District).
World school education trends are beginning to arrive at the regions of Belarus. The goal of STEM-centers, actively gaining popularity abroad, is to give the school children the opportunity to acquire knowledge and to master the skills which are necessary for life in future technological society. Thanks to the joint efforts of the Association “Education for the Future”, the Education, Sports and Tourism Department of the Executive Committee of the Borisov District and Oxagile company, now technologies will become for children not just stories from science fiction books, but a reality that can be directly created and developed.
Borisov and Borisov District have become pioneers not accidentally. On the basis of the Borisov Secondary School No. 20 STEM-park exists and it is actively developing. Now school STEM-education has become more accessible - and the children of three Borisov schools can study free in new, technically equipped classes, communicate with each other and organize competitions. And although classes in the opened this week STEM-centers have not yet begun, groups of students have already been recruited.
Grounds for training programs in STEM-centers are set by the “four” benchmarks: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. School children will study not only physics, mathematics and programming, but also new subjects – robotechnics and 3D-design.
“In the past the problem was that in order to get knowledge, information needed to be kept in mind, – as the Chairman of the Management Board of the Association “Education for the Future” Dmitry Gursky notes. – Now we need skills, in particular, skills related to the organization of teams, setting goals and missions – they are, so-called “soft skills”. Such centers, primarily, are aimed at training project skills”.
Right at the opening of STEM-centers, children manifest an interest in that they can study in the future: they sat at new computers, touched and tried to design robots a little. The curiosity in the eyes and smiles of children – that is what really motivates to create something like that.
Perhaps, in STEM-centers children will make the first steps in the matter of their own professional choice: one is dreaming of becoming a robot designer or a 3D modeler now. And, of course, studying at STEM-center is just very interesting.
The opening of STEM-centers offers advantages to the schools themselves: they create dynamic, innovative environment that motivates not only to teach but also to be taught. The teachers, interested in their business, have the opportunity to implement the strategy of lifelong education.
In the future, it is planned to open STEM-centers in other regions. The focus is on small towns, since currently 80 per cent of all Belarusian schoolchildren live and study there. Nothing matters more than the creation of such classes is realistic: it all starts with the desire and initiative of the school itself. School, which in the future wants to become a center of the development of STEM-education, can be yours.
The author of the text: Margarita Rovbo.