Falcon Cove Middle School is one of 30 Broward County Public Schools middle schools to share in a $60,000 grant supporting the District’s #BrowardCODES for Social Good Initiative, STEMpathy. The program is focused on supporting social and emotional learning experiences, while using computer science and STEM to solve real-world problems.
The Falcon Cove STEMpathy Club started in February and Advisor Jaymi Feller says they are actively recruiting members. “All students, with an interest in making the world a better place, are invited to join. Students will learn project design, coding and, most of all, creating technology with a humanistic approach.”
After brainstorming problems and issues affecting society, Mrs. Feller says the club members picked two projects. “Both were created out of the desire by our students to meet one of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development goals. The one that resonated with our students is ‘Imagine the world in 2030, fully inclusive of persons with disabilities.’”
To attain that goal, members of the Falcon Cove STEMpathy Club are working on exposing special needs students to coding. According to Mrs. Feller, “They are preparing student-taught lessons on how to use resources by Scratch and Code.org to elicit a fondness of technology and the desire to create their own games through these coding languages.”
Their second project is STEMpathy Helping the Elderly. The plan is to go out into the community and teach seniors how to use their smart phones and computers. Mrs. Feller says the students are creating a business plan to launch the project next year in local senior living residences.
“Our goal is to hopefully make the elderly feel more in touch with society by helping the elderly with their technology,” explains sixth grader Nate Exelbrit.
Mrs. Feller say she is impressed with the ingenuity and passion the students have for the STEMpathy concept. The club tagline is ‘Using technology and empathy to make the world a better place’, but it’s also benefitting the students. “Helping others while using and building their technology skills will help the students be better problem solvers in all areas of their lives,” notes Mrs. Feller.
The Falcon Cove STEMpathy Club will use its share of the $60,000 grant to purchase supplies for their projects and to attend the Broward County Computer Science Fair.