Clayton Festival- Community engagement in early childhood STEM education

Description

Preamble:
Education is now being articulated differently because of the immersed role of technology in young children’s everyday life and the rapid changes in technology. There has also been an interest in recent years in the role of digital making, the design and production of digital artefacts, texts, and products in makerspaces. A range of international research programs have studied the potential role that makerspaces have in education, identifying that they can foster a wide range of children’s learning skills such as creativity and lead to valuable educational opportunities.
We aim to explore the impact on children’s STEAM learning and development when they play and tinker with modern technologies/smart toys such as robotic toys, alongside children’s, parents’ as well as community perspectives of these toys. In order to present a rich overview of children’s play practices with such technologies, Monash University STEM education academics from the Faculty of Education provided at the Clayton festival a series of free age-appropriate activities and children were grouped as 3-6 and 6-10 years old. We organised a combination of STEM-based table-top and floor activities which included children's play with coding robotic toys, makey-makey kits, Lego we do 2.0 kits, Lego mindstorms, iPad run robotic toys, and magnetic little bits blocks play.

Period	23 Feb 2020
Event title	Clayton Community Festival 2020
Event type	Other
Location	Clayton, Australia, Victoria
Degree of Recognition	Local