BOISE — School closures extend even longer, which means more teachers are fine-tuning how to educate at a distance.
"We're engaged right now in a real-world stem event," said the president of PCS Edventures Mike Bledsoe.
Teaching is a complicated task to move into the all-digital sphere. STEM resources make that move a little smoother.
"Drastic switch to having accommodate students at home, whether or not they had access to the internet, we want to supply free resources to educators," said curriculum coordinator for PCS Edventures Erika Liebel.
Liebel is an educator as well and says these tools offer much-needed support to educators. PCS Edventures offers both webinars to aid teachers in making the transition online and educational tools for students. Brick Labs is one example; it's a lego-like model with stem-related information as part of the activity.
"We do have products for every age group," said Bledsoe.
In addition to the support for educators, PCS Edventures is also working with other local companies to turn their stem shop into a face shield creation site.
"We have a 3D printer in our shop, and we're just going to run that thing until it breaks down and then we fix it and keep running it," said Bledsoe,
"we're demonstrating to kids whether you take your 3D printing, or designing, or computing, coding, whatever, you can take that and apply it and make a difference."
Bledsoe says while they already offer online support, no one, business, or educator was adequately prepared for this, but it's likely not a mistake that will happen again.
"We're going to have a plan B in place that's going to be a distance learning as a nation, and if this ever happens again there's not going to be a clunky roll-out, it's going to be pretty smooth," said Bledsoe.
