Latino STEM Alliance Places Blue-Bots in Boston Public Schools
Terrapin is proud to partner with the Latino STEM Alliance, a Massachusetts-based non-profit whose mission is to inspire and empower underserved students to pursue academic and career success in STEM fields by providing meaningful and engaging STEM learning opportunities while they are in school.
For over a decade the Alliance has placed equipment, educators, curriculum, and support into classrooms at partner schools in the Boston area. For Terrapin, it was especially gratifying to work with this great organization in our local area by supplying Blue-Bots and working with Lauren Cooke, Director of Programs and Partnerships at the Latino STEM Alliance.
Lauren told us:
“We pride ourselves on having really close relationships with educators. We piloted a variety of early ed products for teachers who were interested in exploring, but had trouble finding just the right fit. When we discovered Blue-Bots, we wanted all of our early learning partners to have them. Many rotate Blue-Bots from class to class, but one school has a Blue-Bot in every room! Both teachers and students love using Blue-Bots and have incorporated their use into daily curriculum. We distribute mats and other supporting materials along with Blue-Bots to get the teachers off to a quick start.
Latino STEM Alliance has now developed our own unique, culturally competent K-3 Blue-Bot curriculum, which is delivered via literacy and other core early competencies.”
You can find the curriculum here. For each K–3 grade, a short bilingual book is used as a focal point for 4 lessons. In this first book, Cerca (Close), kindergartners practice spatial reasoning and build their own 3-dimensional scene for Blue-Bot to explore.
Lauren pointed out that Blue-Bots are the only early ed product that brings students from simply using directional language and manually moving the ‘bot to coding Blue-Bot remotely via another device Blue-Bot platform via Bluetooth. “No other early ed product that we know of brings those two tasks together so seamlessly.”
“Thank you for your support and for making this amazing product. Teachers are loving it - and happy teachers make the world a better place!”
We couldn’t agree more!
Thank you to Lilliana Tirado Arteaga, technology director at the Mario Umana Academy, where we recently visited, and Mary Anderson, who welcomed us to her classroom.
Contact Information
| Name | Lauren Cooke |
| Position | Director of Programs and Partnerships |
| School | Latino STEM Alliance |
| Location | Boston, MA |
| lauren.cooke@latinostem.org | |
| Tags | Blue-Bot, Massachusetts, STEM/STEAM |
| Age | K–3 |