The Exploration Place is STEAMing with new hope for enhanced education for local kids.
The home of the city's only operational steam train is also home to a meeting on Thursday to design a support system for local youth interested in a particular set of subjects in school. The acronym is STEAM and it stands for science, technology, engineering, art and design and math.
Schools aren't the only place young people learn and books aren't the only way young people learn. That's why an already large collection of stakeholders has come together to boost local learning with practical help in those STEAM areas.
More stakeholders are out there and The Exploration Place is offering seats at the discussion table on Thursday morning. The whole project is called Symbiosis, and one initial workshop has been held to start forming the concept into an action plan. It was called Design Studio 1 and on Thursday it gets a second round of brainstorming at Design Studio 2.
Many of the people at the Symbiosis table are already involved in education. There are representatives in the conversation from School District 57, UNBC, CNC, the Prince George Public Library, and others.
Some public agencies and government departments also have representation, like the City of Prince George, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, GenomeBC, etc.
What organizers are hoping for most is a larger cross-section of industry, trades and the business world to come in for Design Studio 2 and give their input as the hands-on users of science, technology, engineering, art and design and math in their daily practices.
"An educational ecosystem is all about access," said Amanda Smedley, deputy director at The Exploration Place.
"It is about a stream of education that will take young people interested in these subjects all the way through their classroom learning, but also give them extra support, enhanced experiences, broader horizons, and help open their doors into professions in their future," she said. "We may not even be able to predict what those professions are, because many jobs of the future haven't even been invented yet, and others that exist now are going to fade with changes in technology. The more we can give these kids a set of baseline skills in those subjects right now, the better prepared they will be for whatever the future holds. What we do know for sure is the importance science, technology, engineering, art and design and math will always play in the industries and economies and daily lives of the future."
The education ecosystem concept may sound vague or metaphorical, but it is already a model in heavy use in pockets of the United States. It is a structured system of delivering an enhanced educational experience and it is slowly making its way into Canada.
One of the first to adopt the idea was Science World in Vancouver.
The Exploration Place has a close working relationship with Science World, so a proposal was made to establish an education ecosystem especially for the Prince George region, working in tandem with the one being set up in the Lower Mainland.
"Everyone at the first Design Studio has been invited back, and the list keeps getting bigger as we think of new people who naturally fit," said Smedley. "We want the doors to be wide open for people to come into the process. So many local companies and associations are out there that touch on these subjects, and they are so important for the conversation.
Construction, mining, agriculture, forestry, oil and gas, manufacturing, engineering, designing, high-tech, the financial industry... a lot of our local economy is based on working in the STEAM subjects. It makes a lot of sense for this area to embrace the educational ecosystem concept."
For more information, contact Smedley at The Exploration Place (amanda.smedley@theexplorationplace.com) and you can familiarize yourself with the concept at www.symbiosis.ca.
Symbiosis Design Studio 2 happens 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. (light breakfast served) on Thursday. Come listen in and provide input on the vision and structure of this startup initiative. Participation is free, but registration is requested for organizational reasons.
That can be done at the eventbrite.ca website under the heading for Prince George events.
