What have your children been doing this summer that’s STEM related? For us, our summer was a little different than in past years. In the past, we would do a lot more traveling on the weekends. In addition, the boys would participate in an all day summer program.
This year however, we mixed things up with summer programming. Their summer included a week of afternoon golf sessions, a week of College for Kids with an emphasis on STEM for my oldest son, and a summer of STEM experiences with bitWise Academy for my youngest son.
bitWise Academy
bitwise Academy is an online learning platform for children in grades K-12. According to the creator of bitWise, “the vision of bitWise is to bring a progressive, integrated, structured and complete curriculum in Applied Computer Science to students in Grades K – 12 in an interactive, immersive and fun format. The bitWise eLearning platform allows students to learn applied computer science at their own pace.”
Why is this important?
As a mom and Academic Advisor, I see the importance of children having STEM education, so whenever the opportunity arises to expose my children to STEM (or STEAM) education, I jump on it.
Right now, bitWise is carrying out “ground-breaking and fundamental research in applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to adaptive and personalized computer science education for students in K – 12”. This is the wave of the future and I want my children involved.
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I’m certain that a degree of STEM education is weaved into my children’s school curriculum, but I’m not certain as to how much. So, I feel it’s my responsibility to invest in additional opportunities for growth and development. bitWise allows for this.
Courses Available for My Son
So, with my youngest son wanting to be a Professional Gamer or Game Programmer, I have gotten him started with courses on bitWise.
Right now he has 10 courses loaded into his account which are created for his grade level which include:
- Introduction to Programming with Scratch
- Game Programming with Scratch
- Mobile Game Development in JavaScript (App Lab)
- Space Exploration with Scratch
- Exploring Java with BlueJ
- Fundamentals of Art – Part I
- AP Computer Science A
- Classical Mechanics
- Raspberry Pi – Demystified
- Drone Programming
With these programs available to him, he can continue working through them this summer while learning more about programming and game programming; exactly what he wants to learn and do.
Final Thoughts
For parents who are interested in giving their children additional opportunities for STEM development and learning, I would highly suggest investing in bitWise Academy.
The eLearning platforms not only allows the children to learn in an interactive way, but parents have access to their children’s accounts along with reports on time spent in each course. Children even receive certificates for their completed work. I’m personally looking forward to working with my son more on these courses this summer and watching him apply what he learns.
This post is in partnership with US Family Guide.
