STEMUP - Maker Kits for Smarter Kids

Our company STEMUP is developing a 21st century off the shelf STEM Education kit to help kids from 8-16 y.o. build, showcase and sell their own custom design projects with a community of makers.

STEMUP believes that learning is a life-long adventure. It aims to ignite students’ passion for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) through Hands-on Learning Programs by cultivating a maker culture in schools.

STEMUP is developing a 21st century off-the-shelf STEM Education kit to help kids from 8-16 y.o. build, showcase and sell their own custom design projects within a community of like-minded peers. We hope to inspire everyone, including parents and children to join us in the life-long adventure of learning.

STEMUP's purpose is to complement formal education by developing children's life skills through technology enrichment programs.

If we can reach, influence and educate as much students to pursue STEM related careers and be globally competitive, we can bridge the skills gap between the industry and academe.

(More info from my 4 minute presentation)

Our schools are lacking in active learning programs. Students don't have access to STEM laboratories.

Data released by the DepEd in 2012 showed that out of 45,977 public elementary and secondary schools only 5,821 or 13% have a science laboratory despite multiple initiatives to address the need. (source - Manila Times April 2015 )

In a recent survey of 78 companies conducted by the group, it found that nearly 25 percent of entry-level jobs in 2016 were left unfilled because of the lack of qualified talent. (source -Inquirer July 2017)

(Here's why I pursued STEM Education)

We have the 18 years of industry experience in manufacturing, engineering and design. We have 9 years of work experience in Singapore. We have a very good partnership with Dreamcatcher, a STEM provider in Singapore and Malaysia.

We had very positive feedback from our previous workshops with  Mind Museum Makerspace and Builtable Makerspace.    

We are integrating an eLearning system. We made an initial test validation with our landing page as our Minimum Viable Product. We had positive feedback from the test users as shown.

Students will be equipped with the 21st century life skills. Teachers  are passionate and driven to life long learning adventure together with parents.

Factories, Industries, Engineering offices will be able to hire very qualified world class workers. Productivity in workplace will increase, more jobs will be created. Government are efficient. Teachers get very good pay. Our nation can help other nations to grow.

Online Registration of the schools to the STEMUP platform (website) - 25 schools after 2 years

Online Sign-ups from the students to our e-Learning platform (also on website) - 5-10% increase in student enrollment for the STEM strand in K-12 in the first year

We have not seen any existing platform in the Philippines with a blended learning system that is delivered through a centralized Learning Management System. It will be unique such that we can localized each learning system depending on the country or language.

STEMUP, is developing a 21st century, off-the-shelf, STEM Education kit to help kids from 8-16 y.o. build, showcase, and sell their own custom designed projects.  

We want to cultivate the culture of creating with a community of makers, consisting of students, teachers, and parents. We intend to connect our STEM school partners to big industry players in such activities like career talks, job shadowing and workshops, advise for schools on their teaching programs, industry visits, and online STEMchats with engineers and scientists. From end-to-end, we aim to build an ecosystem of people that can positively contribute to each other.

Our system will be implemented in schools (B2B) similar to the Kumon approach.

For B2C, parents can order an off-the-shelf STEM Kit online and learn together with their child using our Learning Management System (eLearning).

We're still in the product development stage and we will be testing our pricing.

Currently, this is funded though the projects and kits that have already been sold, but we are very much open to private funding and public grants.

For public grants we hope to get help from the Department of Science and Technology, or the Department of Education to help us in our product development. Funding granted will be used to increase our product development, hire sales business development team, and for curriculum development in partnership with the academe.

For growth and scaling, we are working towards partnership with Local Government Units and association with private schools. Our next step would be to secure an endorsement from the Department of Education and the Department of Science and Technology.

Our biggest factor would be the discontinuity of our desire to improve the educative system in the Philippines. Other factors would include big players in the market, traditional school mindsets that are unwilling to try new methods, and lack of support from the government.

http://www.3dtayo.com/

http://www.stemup.co/

We hope to leverage on the core values of SOLVE to help us improve our educational system in the Philippines, through an Active Learning Program for schools.

By becoming a Solver, we hope to decrease the skill-gap between the industry and academe.

STEMUP initially partnered with Dreamcatcher to jump start this initiative. Our other contributors and advisors are fellow members of the Founder Institute. We are actively looking for Co-founders (from the academe) and Sales and Business partners.

Felta; Data Science and Technology Corporation; Smile Group PH; Technokids; TechFactors, Inc.