Meet our kits!
Our award-winning kit
Over the last decade working with schools we've seen so many STEM education kits that just aren't cut out for the classroom. Commercial kits often featured components that were too small for students, boards that were difficult to program, and parts that were too fragile. And more importantly, none of them came with appropriate resources to run lessons in classrooms. So we worked with teachers for 18 months to co-design our Internet of Things kit and 20 curriculum-linked lessons.
Our Internet of Things kit picked up the education award in the Innovate with nbn program, which has enabled us to work with some of Australia's most remote schools - learn more about the program here.
Built for classrooms
Our kits are built around the BBC micro:bit, a microprocessor that’s simple to program but capable of creating exciting projects. There's also an expansion board, and a range of sensors and outputs, specially chosen to enable students to make real-world projects.
Our kits feature:
- Resealable packaging to keep components safe
- Visual indicators to make things easy to identify.
- Sensors that are carefully selected to give the broadest range of options for students to explore.
- Sensors with simple connectors for little fingers.
- A friendly calico bag to hold everything.
Designed to improve teacher confidence.
Some teachers really worry about teaching STEM as they feel that they aren't experts themselves. We wanted to design something that any teacher can use and get great results with. We did that by building resources that let teachers learn alongside their students.
To do this, we co-designed the kits and the lessons with teachers. We spent 18 months piloting, testing, and refining the kit and the lessons to make sure that everything was easy to use, but with a massive amount of space for students to explore - a low floor, with wide walls, and a high ceiling.
We like to say that our lessons are not recipes - they are serving suggestions. Once teachers are confident in using these kits, they can remix ideas, design new challenges and let students explore their own inquiry. We've scaffolded the lessons to introduce concepts in a logical fashion, but the very atomic nature of the lesson challenges lets you meet your students where they are - we trust teachers to know their students and know what is going to work best for them.
While we think there’s a lot of genius in our kits and lessons, most of it isn’t ours – it’s all the insights we gleaned from our pilot schools that have made this kit the best possible product for classrooms that it can be.
