Pioneer Elementary School has received a $35,000 donation from IGT Indiana, which will go toward creating opportunities in STEM education for its students.
IGT, the Hoosier Lottery’s integrated service provider, made the donation through its After School Advantage program. The donation will go toward purchasing cutting-edge materials that students can use to develop robotics, coding and problem-solving skills.
The donation was announced Tuesday afternoon in the elementary school gymnasium, in the presence of members of IGT and the Hoosier Lottery. State Rep. Ethan Manning (R-District 23), Pioneer Regional School Corporation Superintendent Charles Grable, Principal Pat Quillen, Cass County Community Foundation President and CEO Deanna Crispen and elementary school teacher Alesia Brown, who was joined by several of her highly qualified students .
“One of the things our students need more of is hands-on opportunities in the real world,” Quillen said after the presentation. “Project-based learning is something that really captures their imagination and helps them make connections with things they learn in class. It makes them more involved.”
Quillen said the funding will help students expand their minds and put the lessons they learned in science and math classes to work.
The funding came about when Crispen contacted Quillen and shared information about the opportunity.
Among the items Pioneer can buy with the money are a MacBook Pro, an iPad, K’nex and Lego, a Sphero Little Bits STEAM Coding Kit, software for CAD and coding and a variety of robotic equipment.
Following the presentation, high-ability students and the Pioneer Elementary robotics team showed off some of the materials they had to learn with.
One of those items the students demonstrated was an Ozobot, a small round robot that could follow drawn lines on a piece of paper. When the line changed color, the robot would detect the change and the lights would adjust to the color.
“We give our students the opportunity to explore aspects of career fields that extend beyond a rural community,” Brown said as she worked with three girls coding on an iPad. “Even with agriculture. Much of agriculture is now technically advanced and our students have not yet had access to many of those components.”
She said some children had commented that they had seen items purchased with the donation on YouTube and were surprised that they now had access to something like this at their school.
“It’s cool to bring some of those aspects of the technology world into a small agricultural school,” she said.
Brown, who oversees the Girls Leadership Club at Pioneer Elementary, said it was also great to see girls interacting with the learning tools and building robots, and that there was still a stigma around women, not just in technology careers, but also in leadership roles.
“There is a stigma that girls cannot achieve what some of their male peers can,” she said. “If you look around this room now, you’ll see girls in robotics. There are girls working with high skill groups building robots and learning about STEM and engineering. It can be seen [girls] that this generation will have a more level playing field.”
