By Elissa Milto, Director of Outreach
In October 2017, the Thai Ministry of Education visited the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) to learn about the Center and invited us to participate in the 2018 International Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education Conference (ISMTEC). A year later on October 17th, Elissa Milto, CEEO Director of Outreach, traveled to Bangkok to present at the conference that was hosted by the Ministry of Education and the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST). The following week, she led a two-day workshop for IPST staff at their center.
ISMTEC 2018’s theme was Bringing Computational Thinking to K-12 and was attended by teachers and administrators who work with students from the elementary to college level. Elissa presented a talk and a workshop both on client-centered design for young students showing ways to connect students to clients, both real and imagined, through CEEO work including Novel Engineering and CEEO’s Design and Engineering workshops. The attendees especially enjoyed the hands-on portions and the discussions about how engineering is approached in the various countries of those who attended. She was able to attend presentations and workshops to hear about innovative ways that people in other countries are tackling teaching young students STEM and computational thinking.
During the two-day workshop at IPST, Elissa covered similar information but was able to go into greater depth on the CEEO approach and research. Participants were able to engage in more hands-on projects so they could experience what a full CEEO-developed engineering activity is like. Some local teachers joined IPST staff for the workshop allowing for teacher perspectives to be included during the discussions. Elissa based the content of the second day on questions and feedback from the first day. They did a full-scale activity based on the book A Long Walk to Water and discussed implementation of client-centered engineering challenges in classrooms. Time was also spent talking about how client-based engineer could be done in Thai classroom and how it could fit into the Thai educational system.
In between workshops, Elissa traveled to northern Thailand to visit an elephant sanctuary.
