School Programs

STEAMpunk Adventures

Around YOUR World in X Days

Are you looking for ways to provide differentiation without the extra work? Or maybe you struggle to find programs with integration that link easily to the curriculum?

STEAMpunk Adventures is a design thinking program framework that can be tailored for any classroom. We provide template workbooks and curriculum linked lesson plans with samples. 

The program gives students the freedom to explore the world around them as a team through guided activities that complement what you already do in your classroom today. This exposes them to PBL, IBL, design thinking, flipped classrooms, setting up for integrated, differentiated learning linked to the curriculum.

Inspired by the STEAMpunk movement, we invite students to use their imagination to discover real-world problems in areas they are passionate about that they can solve by applying technology, props and costumes in novel and original ways.

 Leading with Arts and Humanities with focus on real-world problems we look at STEM through a different lens to create the STEAM required to power our future.

 Ideal for students years four to nine, and can be tailored for any school age.

We also run half day workshops help teachers and learning leads to discover how they can use STEAMpunk Adventures to set up their school and classrooms to inspire STEM interest and awareness.

Delivered in collaboration with:

Want to hear more about STEAMpunk Adventures and our workshops?

Check out some past project pitches!

So much fun in just EIGHT lessons!!!

I cannot believe what these teams were able to achieve in just 8 lessons as part of our inaugural pilot competition in conjunction with National Science Week Australia in 2020. To be honest, I don't think they quite believed what they did either. I am so proud of them.

Three of the teams were from a blended class of mainstream and EALD students in a primary school in Australia. One team was secondary school students from Malawi, Africa. 

STEAMpunk Adventures can be tailored for any length and cohort, and we provide a framework and samples to help you map to your curriculum and learning areas.

 

Program Outline for Students

Calling all creators, technologists & inventors!

STEAMpunk is an inspired movement of creativity and imagination. Use clothing, props & technology in new and unique ways to explore & change your future (or past). Present your ideas and inventions using art, film, writing, images, audio or other media.

The WHY

In our world today, it is hard to imagine how we would survive without technology. And to figure out what we can do to improve the outcomes.

We invite you to come with us on an adventure to learn more about how human intelligence and technology intersect and interact. What is the right balance? Is there a right balance? Where do arts, creativity and other 21st Century skills fit in.

Some people feel a bit lost and don’t understand STEM or technology. Let’s explore and have some fun with STEAMpunk.

The WHAT

Explore your theme and the brief to identify a problem you want to solve. Can you align with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

Work with your team to empathise with the user, define your design challenge and come up with a solution that you can pitch at the end of the workshop. As a team, tap into your superpowers and decide who does what.

Come up with ideas & inventions to solve your challenge. Use your imagination, change things around, add seemingly unrelated information and props. Does that make for a better world?

Have fun pitching your team’s ideas and inventions.

The WHO

We believe this program will be most fun for students in years 5 to 8, but can be tailored for any age group.

Adults. e.g. parents, teachers, teaching assistants, youth workers, can participate to help guide, but are asked to allow the students to work independently.

The only rule is that the young people are given free rein to invent and explore together, come up with inventions and to present their journey in any way that they see fit… drawings, story telling, audio, interviews, video, images, an essay, song and dance… their preferred method of expression as a team.

The WHEN

The face-to-face teacher workshops will be available for teachers and students at select schools during school terms in Western Australia starting in Term 1 2021.

Each workshop will be standalone session where both teachers and students work in teams to solve problems related to the theme for the specific workshop.

Teachers will be invited to follow-up online sessions to further evolve and tailor the experience for their needs.

The workshops can be tailored for other formats and we are planning to set up an online version.

Contact us for more information.

 

The HOW

It’s a fairly simple process

  • Explore the predefined theme and material for a problem
  • Set up team and agree on roles
  • Define your design challenge
  • Invent & design solution(s)
  • Present your invention

The presentation or pitch will be run as a fun type of competition. There are no wrong or right answers. This is exploratory and we look forward to seeing how you map out this journey and present it.

We have no doubt that you will have fun and come up with plenty of ideas, but to help you along the way, we will provide a suggested approach, guiding questions and samples every day. 

All you need is LOW-TECH

Think you need advanced tech to participate? Think again.

We want everyone to be able to enjoy this, so the only thing you need is an email address and one device per team so you can participate online and do your research. We will be suggesting a couple of easy to use digital platforms, but they are not mandatory.

What you will need is:

  • Can-do attitude
  • Collaborative team
  • Creativity & critical thinking
  • Communication skills
  • Paper, post-it notes

Program Resources

 Information for Teachers

The objective is to provide teachers with another tool in their toolbelt for providing differentiated, integrated learning that is easily linked to the curriculum for a learning level. As part of the program, we will provide sample lesson plans with proposed links to the curriculum.

The program also includes the following activities:

PRE PROGRAM 

  • Teacher group briefing online session (in person or video on demand)
  • Teacher/school session to tailor the program for your your students
  • Template student survey to determine passion areas and help assign to teams
DURING PROGRAM (optional for a fee):
  • Group mentoring weekly sessions
  • Individual mentoring on demand

 POST-PROGRAMS

  • 2 x online sessions with other teachers to collaborate and reflect, refine and apply at their school

Want to hear more about our STEAMpunk Adventures programs?

Why STEAMpunk?

STEAMpunk is an inspired movement of creativity and imagination, where people use clothing, props and technology in novel and original ways. It invites images of the Victorian era and the Wild West, ideas of fascinating machines and fanciful costumes, etiquette and wit, playfulness and adventure.

It is a wonderful backdrop for inspiring youth to develop research skills, learn about history, engage in collaboration, and gain numerous other essential skills for 21st century learning.

STEAMpunk incorporates ideas such as retro-futurism and anachronisms. It imagines certain discoveries never happened and impossible or  unknown inventions exist. It dresses up gadgets and makes them fashionable, it runs with illogical designs, and invites creativity and play. Technology as we know it progresses in a logical way, with each discovery building on previous discoveries. But what would happen if something changed – what would the impact be on future discoveries and events?

Books and movies have expanded on these ideas, with a fascination in machines, gadgets and weaponry, that are innovative, creative and out of this world! These classics include The Golden Compass, Back to the Future, BladeRunner, Dr. Who, Studio Ghibli films, and Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne. Verne’s novels are often called the earliest versions of STEAMpunk literature. They imagine different pasts and futures than the ones we have experienced. They contain a spirit of discovery and adventure, with an individualistic “can-do” attitude, and a belief that anyone can do anything with enough science and nerve. 

By playing with these ideas, understanding the advantages and disadvantages of technology, learning about cause and effect, and adding creativity and imagination, we will have a fun and accessible journey of learning and discovery. We will offer opportunities to see the benefits and shortcomings of technology and create innovative solutions that harness the best qualities in humans and technology, through inventive projects, daily check-ins, and powerful questions to stimulate ideas. We will be the heros in our own STEAMpunk adventure!

There are unlimited possibilities for creating new futures, innovative technologies and funky fashions while learning important skills for 21st century learning.

Want to hear more about our STEAMpunk Adventures programs?

Rules of Engagement

1. Organiser

The program is being run by STEAM Engine Global, a social enterprise that aims to bridge the gap and develop career pathways for disadvantaged population groups. Part of the challenge is that a lot of young people feel disengaged and alienated in a world underpinned by technology. The goal is to inspire, enable and empower the learners through bringing in 21st Century skills, global citizenship and experiential learning in a fun, personalised project-based learning environment where the learners have agency in their own learning through relevance and choice.

2. The Program

“Around YOUR World in X Days” is a program framework that can be tailored for any skills and schooling level to provide differentiated, integrated learning that can be linked to the curriculum. The STEAMpunk Adventures Series is a series of affordable, low-tech, blended programs inspired by the STEAMpunk movement. Participants are encouraged to think outside the box and not be limited by time and space while they explore the interaction between human skills and technology, Arts and STEM in their own world and try to come up with “inventions” that can improve the outcomes.

3. Program Dates

The school programs can be run individually at schools, and will be available online as packages for a specific age group, and can also be tailored for specific needs.

Dates and duration depend on how the teachers decide to configure the program in their classroom. The program can be run as a one day workshop, and intensive over X lessons or over a term / semester.

We are planning to run inter school competitions in 2021.

4. What will Students Get out of the School Program

All students will participate in real-world experiential learning inspired by Design Thinking, which develops 21st Century Skills and fosters Global Citizenship, which can be applied to any future learning.

Each participant will be provided with a certificate for their participation, digital copies of cheat sheets, templates and references, a digital team workbook and a STEAMpunk Adventures gift.

We are planning a global STEAMpunk Adventures online competition. Participating teams will be eligible to apply to pitch either in person or by submitting a video pitch.

The teams will have an option to be featured on the STEAMpunk Adventures podcast.

5. Teams and registration

  • The workshop is open to teachers who may bring up to 4 students
  • Students will be allocated into teams a week prior to the workshop
  • Teachers will be allocated into teacher teams a week prior to the workshop
  • All participants will be provided with a theme and material relating to that theme a week before the workshop
  • Each team team will consist of 4-5 members

6. Purpose of collection of information

STEAM Engine Global Pty Ltd collects personal information only as part of the entry in order to conduct the competition. 

By submitting an entry, entrants agree that the STEAM Engine Global may, for an indefinite period, unless otherwise advised, use the personal information collected from the entry for promotional, marketing and publicity purposes for the competition, for internet posts and/or for future communication.

Details are documented in our Privacy Policy.

Learn more about STEAMpunk Adventures or participate in a workshop?

If you want to hear, want to participate in a workshop, or are interested in running a similar workshop or other STEAMpunk Adventures initatives at your school, please contact us to explore if we can make it happen.

 

Find out more

 

If you need some more information before you make up your mind, let’s start with a conversation.

Contact Info

Perth, Western Australia

steampunk@steamengine.global