Oakland Schools’ STEMi Truck Visits Troy, Excites 5th Graders

This whole week--Dec. 11-15--District 5th graders took field trips to the Services parking lot, where the Oakland Schools STEMi truck was waiting with awesome learning opportunities inside. (Pictured here are eager learners from Costello Elementary.)

The STEMi experience is supported by Oakland Schools’ STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and Career Readiness Consultants and is a 1000-square-foot mobile lab designed to provide learners with meaningful hands-on experience with the latest industry technologies. The goal of the program is to support students in becoming more career ready through identifying aspects of the stations that they enjoy and have competency. Knowledge of interests and strengths are pillars of being a career-ready student. In an effort to expose students to a wide range of technologies, they experienced several stations including:

• Smart Manufacturing

• Collaborative Robots

• Self Driving Vehicles

• Extended Reality

• STEM Check Out Library

• STEMi Pre/Post Activities

Students excitedly moved from station to station, never realizing that organic learning happened while they were playing. They played games with Virtual Reality headgear, drove robotic sportscars around a track, explored the human heart using video and nanotechnology, and programmed robots to use their “hands” to stack and manipulate blocks. Educators were available to encourage and answer questions and led their students in making connections to the curriculum that was being taught in in the classroom. (Plus, it was really cool. )

For more information about Oakland Schools’ STEMi program, visit https://www.oakland.k12.mi.us/stem/stemi To view photos visit: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=TroySchoolDistrict&set=a.819670500169927

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