“I have to say, this was one of the best professional development sessions I have participated in over my many years as an educator. Job well done!” said Diane Specht, a STEM Exploration Teacher at Putnam County Middle School in Georgia. Her enthusiastic feedback captured the positive sentiments shared by all 38 educators who participated in the sixth annual edition of Samsung’s popular Solve for Tomorrow Teacher Academy educator development program.
The Academy is an extension of Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow (SFT) STEM competition, which challenges public middle and high school students in grades 6-12 to use their STEM skills to create solutions for pressing issues facing their local communities. The educator workshops have historically focused on training teachers to implement and leverage Problem-Based Learning (PBL) — an approach that emphasizes problem identification and solution-finding in teaching STEM subjects. This method helps educators engage students through active, hands-on project development, applying learning to real-world problems that demonstrate the value of STEM both inside and outside the classroom – often leading to winning entries in the SFT STEM competition.
Participant map from the sixth annual Solve for Tomorrow Teacher Academy
Modernizing Teaching: Integrating AI into Project-Based Learning
Today’s Gen Z and Gen Alpha students have grown up in a world where artificial intelligence (AI) plays an increasingly significant role in their daily lives. AI’s contributions to social media, voice assistants, and search engines are often underappreciated, as are its place in personalized learning tools for students, streaming service recommendations, and virtual reality experiences. Recognizing this, Samsung focused this year’s virtual professional development practicum on modernizing PBL with the help of AI. And the pressing national challenge educators had to address was how to leverage “upcycling” – giving new life to old technology by turning devices into useful new things. This approach helps reduce e-waste, discarded electronic devices and components that can harm the environment if not properly recycled or disposed of.
Ann Woo, Head of Corporate Citizenship for Samsung Electronics America, and a driving force behind SFT explained, “Entering our 15th year of helping schools advance STEM education via Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, we wanted to turbocharge the impact that our Teacher Academy program has for both educators and the students they teach. Teacher Academy, which launched six years ago to meet the demand for more targeted development opportunities, has evolved in response to the overwhelming interest from educators in becoming AI literate. The PBL strategies they learned in the July session were designed to help them teach students about how AI can be a positive force, how to use it responsibly, and collectively leverage the potential of AI in learning.”
Tech upcycling offers exciting opportunities to be creative and help the environment. Between 300 to 400 million electronic items are discarded each year in the U.S., and less than 20% of that gets recycled. E-waste is just 2% of the trash in landfills, but accounts for a whopping 70% of the country’s toxic waste. The Teacher Academy educators were tasked with designing innovative and sustainable solutions for upcycling, repurposing, or reusing these devices. For example, Samsung has introduced ways to upcycle old phones into helpful smart home devices, diverting them from U.S. landfills.
Teacher Academy partner, MindSpark Learning, which provides innovative and sustainable professional development nationwide for educators, designed a dynamic webinar that included experiencing PBL from a student’s perspective, developing a comprehensive PBL model, integrating generative AI strategies into the PBL plan, building partnerships with the community, and collaborating with fellow educators. The research, ideation, and prototyping process emphasized equity-centered design thinking, fostering active empathy for stakeholders, and understanding the broader human and environmental impacts of e-waste.
The Reviews Are In: Outstanding Feedback from Educators
Reactions have been outstanding. Building on Diane Specht’s remarks, Dr. Martin Ledvina co-director of the Engineering Academy at Alabama’s Hoover High School – a 2023-2024 Solve for Tomorrow National Winner – said, ”The Teacher Academy PBL session had several outstanding features. First, it was conducted professionally and effectively—fast-paced and engaging, keeping us educators on our toes and actively involved. Second, the inclusion of the design thinking process was terrific as it emphasized prioritizing the community’s needs. Third, I thought that the way AI was presented—in the context of showcasing its significant role in defining problems and advancing projects—was superb.”
The diverse skill sets educators brought to the table were exemplified and celebrated by JD Ospina both a makerspace and woodworking teacher from Connecticut’s Westhill High School. He remarked, “Connecting with proactive educators from across the country who are eager to make an impact beyond the classroom was truly special. We discussed different weather, community dynamics, and heard it all in different U.S. accents; yet we were unified by a common purpose of improving our impact at our schools.” While outside what some might consider typical bounds of STEM, JD’s roles at Westhill show how STEM cuts across all disciplines and aspects of life. And how Solve for Tomorrow welcomes applications from all educators.
Stay tuned for more Teacher Academy sessions throughout the school year! Future topics will include an in-depth exploration of AI, as well as fostering entrepreneurship, and methods for establishing social enterprises to sustain the impact of students’ Solve for Tomorrow STEM solutions.
To learn more about the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow STEM competition, which will be accepting entries starting late-August through late-October 2024, please visit samsung.com/solve.
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