Stick'Em: Chopstick STEAM kit

Stick 'Em

Stick'Em: Chopstick STEAM kit

Stick 'Em is making STEAM education accessible to all with our low-cost chopstick STEAM kit, and a self guided, 21st Century curriculum

Singapore

SGP

For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models

Nearly 1 billion children are growing up without proper access to STEAM education. In 2030, without STEAM skills, most of these children won’t be prepared for the future. Apart from the obvious consequences of limited STEM access (reduced employment opportunities, lower lifetime earnings, greater digital divide), there are more personal issues like the inability to solve everyday problems, low confidence, reduced creativity, and missing out on opportunities due to a lack of global knowledge. There are two main reasons why STEAM education is so inaccessible right now: 1) Traditional STEAM education infrastructure is either too dang expensive (like LEGO at $650 / Kit) or too complex and unintuitive for school-wide programs in primary and secondary schools. Hardware like Arduino is cheap, but implementing it in school is often impossible unless the teacher has deep expertise in electronics to design a curriculum and guide students. On the other hand, simple and cheap STEM kits water down the educational quality for the sake of simplicity, resulting in low-quality learning experiences. 2) There are not enough teachers who can teach STEAM. In developing regions of Southeast Asia, someone experienced in coding and robotics would probably choose a different career from teaching.

To solve this, we created a SUPER affordable STEAM Kit to empower children to develop curiosity in STEAM fields. Using 3D printed geometric connectors, wooden chopsticks and a super simple plug & play electronics board (ESP32 with a custom PCB), we have reduced the cost of STEAM kits tenfold. Beyond just the hardware, Stick 'Em provides an online platform that educates and engages students through games, challenges, and competitions. This makes the learning experience fun and interactive while developing important skills like creativity and problem-solving on top of their academic curriculum. To empower teachers in schools, Stick 'Em provides self-guided materials, ready-to-use resources as well as train-the-teacher sessions that enable ANY teacher to effectively facilitate STEAM classes, even without a technical background. This removes another key barrier to expanding STEAM education.

Our target demographic is low-mid tier public and private schools that have limited manpower and funding. The typical students of these schools are paying 50-100 USD per month in school fees. For the past decade, Robotics and Coding have been considered too exclusive & expensive for most schools in developing regions. Only fancier international schools and well-funded private schools could create STEM programmes, and even then it might be limited to a small batch of students. While there have been more options lately, there is still a nagging question of how teachers can implement this themselves without bringing in expensive trainers or compromising the educational quality for the sake of simplicity. Put together, these aspects of Stick 'Em make quality STEAM education much more accessible to students from all backgrounds, especially underserved communities that couldn't afford expensive robotics programs before. With smartphones and internet access becoming ubiquitous and very affordable, even rural schools in developing countries can now access quality STEAM education through platforms like Stick 'Em. After gaining confidence with the STEAM kit, students tackle real-world challenges like disaster relief and wildlife conservation, improving problem-solving, research, communication, and academic performance while developing key 21st-century skills.