STEAM LAB in classrooms of rural and native communities

Education problems have increased due to lack of connectivity and learning inequality. In Latin America, around 120 million school-age children had missed or were at risk of missing a full year of attendance in the school calendar. In rural areas and indigenous peoples, in addition to showing a large inequality gap in connectivity, there is a lack of resources adapted to their context for the training of teachers and children in areas of science and technology.

If teachers and children have opportunities to access comprehensive learning in STEAM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics), we can accelerate progress in the education of children in vulnerable areas

 Unfortunately, in rural and native communities, teachers face multiple problems in their preparation, for example, they do not have resources or training to teach STEAM skills. Parents and children in these communities are also not interested because the resources used by teachers are limited and do not adapt to their reality. As a result, in the case of Peru, almost 60% of students have difficulties learning science, this increases in rural areas. If we talk about the gender gap, 3 out of 10 researchers are women and there are no statistics on the involvement of people from indigenous peoples.

STEAM LAB provides physical and technological teaching resources in the STEAM areas to teachers of regular basic education and Intercultural Bilingual Education, in order to improve the skills of children in rural and native communities. Includes: Kits for various educational thematic areas with teaching material, character design that comes to life through narratives shown through the use of QR code and a manual; all these components adapted to the local context. The use of the kit in the classroom is complemented by Augmented Reality (AR), a technology that involves digital tools through the use of videos and audio by the teacher during the development of the students' experiments, which will be combined with the creation of a data set of images provided by Ichik Lab about the characters in the kit according to theme. Likewise, a home projector is included that allows real or virtual moving images, or the results of children's experiments, to be displayed on the classroom wall. This proposal enriches the cultural, social and environmental diversity of the region, while sharing scientific knowledge in the classrooms, which will allow the student to achieve an interactive and dynamic experience under the supervision of the teacher.

STEAM LAB also provides support to teachers, using blended learning tools that connect teachers, scientists and STEAM trainers, aimed at training teachers from rural and native communities in synchronous and asynchronous learning.

STEAM LAB promotes the child's creative, social and emotional skills, in addition to offering the opportunity to learn as a team that fosters empathy through collaborative work in different roles of each student, as well as activities that involve the participation of mentors at home. Interaction with the characters encourages the child to care for the environment while developing critical thinking.

The target population is: 

I) 400 schoolchildren between 5 and 11 years old from rural educational institutions focused on the Coronel Portillo Province of Ucayali. The children are mostly bilingual whose languages are Shipibo-Konibo and Spanish.

II) 14 EIB teachers who teach in the schools of the Coronel Portillo Province of Ucayali. Teachers have little preparation and/or low level of mastery of science teaching.

Teachers have various difficulties such as: geographical, cultural and linguistic diversity, lack of infrastructure, equipment and connectivity in rural schools. Likewise, the scarcity and precariousness of human and financial resources for rural education.

The solution will achieve: a) Teachers with greater preparation, confidence and commitment in learning and teaching new educational methodologies such as STEAM.

b) Students with greater motivation to learn and better skills in STEAM subjects, which will result in achieving better competences. In the long term it will impact the promotion of scientific-technological vocations in the context of their reality.

We are a committed, persevering, creative, visionary and multidisciplinary team that loves children and believes that it is possible to contribute to the improvement of education. We have a common concern for social responsibility and bringing a STEAM experience to children. We have been working together for five years at Ichik Lab, in the development of STEAM kits adapted to the context of teachers from rural and native communities

Our team includes a Shipibo-speaking primary school teacher (from the Shipibo community in the Amazon), who is conducting fun science workshops in a rural school in the Ucayali region. We know closely the reality of the teachers who work in these remote areas and we have experience in the development of educational materials guided in a process of co-creation with teachers and parents. In this sense, we have trained other teachers from native communities (Quechuas, Shipibos and Aymaras), in order to help them teach science in their schools and learn about their experiences to pass them on to other teachers in remote areas

We have investigated the deficiencies in rural areas regarding STEAM education. We have carried out 100 surveys with teachers and parents in reference to the problem.

After that, we built the physical resources as the kits STEAM in chemistry, physics, environment, healthy and biology topics. We have trained 30 early childhood and primary education teachers in vulnerable areas of Lima and the amazon region as Madre de Dios, managing to develop 42 workshops and impact nearly 800 students. Likewise, we have trained 7 bilingual intercultural teachers (Quechuas, Aymaras and Shipibos), from Cuzco, Puno and Ucayali regions, managing to impact more than 200 students, with the use of STEAM kits and digital content that teachers download to take the material to their schools.  

We are improving the technology with augmented reality, this is in construction.

In our work, we found technical limitations for the access of resources by teachers, for which we need to improve our work in the development of the blended-learning platform with a classification of trainers and STEAM content. Likewise, we have financial limitations to cover the aforementioned and equipment necessary for the development of educational resources such as cameras and multimedia equipment. On the other hand, we require the support of Solve to make more alliances with strategic partners such as schools, institutions, companies, rural and native communities, the educational and scientific community, etc., which allow us to make this project sustainable and achieve a greater impact.

Our STEAM LAB solution is innovative because it provides an integrated system based on: Augmented reality (RA), a technology that involves digital tools through the use of videos and audio by the teacher during the development of the students' experiments, which will be combined with the creation of a data set of images provided by Ichik Lab about the characters in the kit according to theme, STEAM kits; that trains teachers from rural and native communities, in the development of their classes under the STEAM methodology. Likewise, this system empowers children's education and involves parents. STEAM LAB provides STEAM content adapted to the local reality, helping teachers and children in their learning of science and technology. It is the only educational system that combines physical and technological teaching resources in STEAM areas. It also allows sharing STEAM experiences among teachers, making the impact scalable.

Our vision for next year is to continue training teachers from rural and native communities (1,300 teachers), who currently work in rural and native communities. After 5 years we will scale our solution, managing to impact the STEAM education of 61 thousand children and educators in Peru, being able to replicate the experience in other countries with a similar context such as Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc. For the training of teachers through the STEAM LAB strategy in rural and native communities, we plan to do this through 1) Increasing the number of our institutional associations, including regional and municipal governments 2) Achieving key alliances with the community of teachers and the scientific community. 3) Achieve a multiplier effect of teachers trained in STEAM areas.

Our vision is to scale our solution to transform the lives of more people.

The implementation of the STEAM LAB in classrooms of rural and native communities has an impact on parity rates, managing to involve a greater number of female teachers and reduce the gender gap. It enables the training of teachers from indigenous peoples, reducing the equality gap in education. Likewise, it contributes to the number of teachers with the minimum qualifications required to teach STEAM areas to their students.

Our technology includes Kits for various educational thematic areas with teaching material, character design that comes to life through narratives shown through the use of QR code and a manual; all these components adapted to the local context. The use of the kit in the classroom is complemented by Augmented Reality (AR), a technology that involves digital tools through the use of videos and audio by the teacher during the development of the students' experiments, which will be combined with the creation of a data set of images provided by Ichik Lab about the characters in the kit according to theme. Likewise, a home projector is included that allows real or virtual moving images, or the results of children's experiments, to be displayed on the classroom wall. This proposal enriches the cultural, social and environmental diversity of the region, while sharing scientific knowledge in the classrooms, which will allow the student to achieve an interactive and dynamic experience under the supervision of the teacher.

STEAM LAB also provides support to teachers, using blended learning tools that connect teachers, scientists and STEAM trainers aimed at training teachers from rural and native communities in synchronous and asynchronous learning.

Full time staff: 2

 Part-time Staff: 2 

Mentors: 1

Since 2019, 5 years

We are a multidisciplinary team, where 75% of the members are women, who come from the 3 regions of Peru (Costa, Sierra and Selva). Within the leadership team we have a teacher from the Native Curiaca del Caco community in the Ucayali region. In addition, we have been working on a co-creation process for the development of various kits and platform content, which involves EIB (bilingual intercultural education) teachers who represent the native communities: Quechuas, Aymaras and Shipibos. Our goal is to include more rural and native communities, achieving a greater impact of educational inclusion, in order to be able to replicate it in other countries with similar contexts.

We provide STEAM training to transform lives of teachers and children from rural and native communities, who do not have opportunities for training or training in STEAM skills. Our key activities are the development and management of the STEAM LAB system through the STEAM application, platform and kits; teacher training, and alliances with public and private institutions. The use of our STEAM LAB system gives teachers confidence in teaching STEAM areas to children. Likewise, clients such as: corporate companies with social responsibility, public and private schools, retails and Government Institutions; they have the opportunity to collaborate in transforming the lives of those most in need. The sale of STEAM kits, training workshops, agreements and optional donations allow us to make our business model sustainable

We currently develop and sell STEAM kits to help implement STEAM classrooms in rural and native communities. We have carried out this work mainly in Lima, the Ucayali region and Cuzco. Our business model involves allies such as: Regional Governments, Municipalities, Ministry of Education and Educational Institutions in the public sector, which will allow us to be financially sustainable in the long term. 

In the private sector we have a plan to involve corporate companies with social responsibility (mining companies, financial entities, etc). Likewise, retails, private educational companies, foundations and non-profit organizations in the educational sector