The objective of the Human STEAM Lab project is to take full advantage the complementary experience and expertise our three schools so to be able to share our best practice (with particular regards to those of the Human STEAM Lab and the Robotics/Robo-ethics initiative) and extend them to pupils in our schools. Besides, we want to develop a model of teaching that can then be extended to others in Europe.We will use two languages that all our students have in common: robotics and English, and will try to create a new one that integrate STEM subjects with Arts and Humanities.With regard to content, robotics, although not part of the formal school curriculum, is becoming increasingly common in schools, and is connected to STEM subjects. However, in this project we would like to go further, by linking science with humanities, technology innovation with the classical tradition that characterizes European culture, and Italian in particular. Hence, another key issue is the ability to integrate humanities also in the more technological and scientific aspects of STEM subjects. In order to achieve such goal, the project will exploit the competences that students have in robotics (all three schools annually compete in RoboCup Jr. in Croatia, Italy and Sweden). The language skills of students will allow them to communicate with their peers, to share content already learned, providing material for personal and group elaboration, introducing the concept of Robo-ethics, and to stimulate further discussions on subjects such as literature, philosophy, cinema.The idea then is to create synergies among schools in order to collaborate on common projects, in order to build and program a robot with which to participate in RoboCup Jr. competitions with an international team (Italy - Sweden, Croatia-Sweden, Italy-Croatia). This will be also an excellent opportunity to share all the humanities and scientific content addressed in the Human STEAM Lab.Finally, we plan to document all phases of realization of the project to make it a case study at the European level.
The Human STEAM Lab project derives from 3 different drivers: on the one hand the need felt by European countries in particular to incorporate STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) in curricular activities at school. The second driver is the coming of the Information Age, which forces the educational models to follow that changeover. The third driver is not to forget the importance of arts and humanities in this endeavor, considered as foundational competencies to empower students to manipulate the medium to their advantage and to handle unintended and unexpected problems when they arise Aware of those drivers, 3 schools, IS Degasperi from Italy, Petreskolan 7-9 from Sweden and I. OSNOVNA SKOLA VARAZDIN from Croatia joined forces to implement the Human STEAM Lab project. The objective of the Human STEAM Lab project was to take full advantage of the complementary experience and expertise of those three schools so to be able to share their best practice (with particular regards to those of the Human STEAM Lab and the Robotics/Robo-ethics initiative) and extend them to their pupils. Besides, we wanted to develop a model of teaching that can then be extended to others in Europe. In order to do so, partners used two languages that all students have in common: robotics and English, and created a new one that integrates STEM subjects with Arts and Humanities. With regard to content, robotics, although not part of the formal school curriculum, is becoming increasingly common in schools, and is connected to STEM subjects. However, in this project we decided to go further, by linking science with humanities, technology innovation with the classical tradition that characterizes European culture, and Italian in particular. Hence, another key issue was to integrate humanities also in the more technological and scientific aspects of STEM subjects. In order to achieve such goal, the project exploited the competences that students have in robotics (all three schools annually compete in RoboCup Jr. in Croatia, Italy and Sweden). The language skills of students allowed them to communicate with their peers, to share content already learned, providing material for personal and group elaboration, introducing the concept of Robo-ethics, and to stimulate further discussions on subjects such as literature, philosophy, cinema. The idea was to create synergies among schools in order to collaborate on common projects, so to build and program a robot with which they participated in RoboCup Jr. competitions with an international team (Italy - Sweden, Croatia-Sweden, Italy-Croatia). This was also an excellent opportunity to share all the humanities and scientific content addressed in the Human STEAM Lab. To achieve those goals, the Human STEAM Lab envisioned the following activities, which were fully implemented in the 22 months’ duration of the project: distance activities (mainly through google drive and other means of shared workspace) and short term training and teaching periods, particularly in periods close to robotics competitions.