DHF was thrilled to host the Baltimore EdTech Meetup this past Monday, and what a meetup it turned out to be!
Rose Burt, lead designer of the new STEMCore curriculum and director of DHF’s “Rec2Tech” program in South Baltimore, spoke about the challenges and benefits of aligning a maker-oriented curriculum to Common Core. The crowd of over 60 edtech enthusiasts got a peak into what that curriculum looked like — with topics ranging from gardening and weaving to coding and running a CNC mill. The focus was on discovery and experimentation across technical disciplines — both “high” and “low” tech.
More important than any tech skill students can learn is a “willingness to dive in and figure it out,” says Rose Burt. — interviewed by Technically Baltimore.
Later, Burt expanded on the idea in a thread on the Baltimore EdTech Group LinkedIn page:
A lot of the activities we have planned are low-tech (building workbenches, knitting hats, printing by hand). We’re tying those in with basic tech literacies (searching for tutorials or info on the internet, documenting by taking pictures and blogging). But I also see a direct relationship between the project, research, and troubleshooting skills we use in physical projects and those same skills as applied to tech projects.
Next up was Betamore’s Mike Brenner, who highlighted opportunities for edtech development at the new Federal Hill entrepreneurship campus. Key to Brenner’s presentation was that each of the assembled educators, technologists, and community organizers had a potential innovation within them; Betamore exists in part to bring that innovation to the fore.
We also had the fortune of hosting a delegation of Russian academics and entrepreneurs who were visiting with the nearby World Trade Center Institute. Quattuor Dimensionis director Denis Nechaev spoke about efforts to link education and entrepreneurship in his country.
The evening ended with a completely impromptu ad hoc pitch session where app entrepreneurs from Baltimore and from Russia demoed new mobile prototypes. It was a perfect way to end the evening.
Be sure to join the Baltimore EdTech Meetup list so that you can keep up to date with future events and goings-on within the community.
