Lego Education President Fosters Putnam Partnership
By Kirk Collier Special to the Daily News
Victor Saejis of Denmark, president of Lego Education, and his national and state leadership team toured two Putnam County schools Thursday to see how Lego’s curriculum is being used to meet the goals of the district’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) initiative.
Superintendent of Putnam County Schools Dr. Rick Surrency met Saejis at a conference in New Orleans and invited him to visit Putnam County to see how Lego Education is being used throughout the school district. Saejis took the opportunity to visit as part of a multi-state tour.
Dr. Melissa Coleman, executive director of PCSD Federal Programs and Instructional Acceleration, Michael Helms, STEM specialist, and Lorena Dominey, STEM resource teacher, served as tour guides.
“Meeting with the international, national and state leaders of Lego Education in Putnam County was an exciting experience for my staff and me,” Surrency said. “Our school district’s K-12 STEM initiative is very forward thinking and is gaining attention from partners both in the U.S. and abroad. Putnam County students will benefit from our strategic partnerships for years to come.”
The district’s STEM initiative aims to inspire students to explore STEM careers through rigorous, engaging instruction and to provide STEM learning opportunities to all students in all grades.
“Your vision is our vision,” Saejis told Surrency. “I feel like we are joined at the hip.”
Dr. Holly Gerlach, Solution Architect for Lego Education, Dr. Joseph Simmons, Florida Key Account Manager for Logo Education and Dan Merrill, head of Lego Education U.S., accompanied Saejis.
Students in Brad Gardner’s sixth-grade STEM Computer Science class demonstrate how they program Lego Spike Prime robots to sense colors when interacting with other robots. (Photo by Lorena Dominey)
At Kelley Smith Elementary School, the Lego group observed Brad Gardner’s sixth-grade STEM Computer Science class demonstrating how they programmed Lego Spike Prime robots to sense colors when interacting with other robots.
The students and visitors also watched the SpaceX launch that resulted in the rocket’s explosion, with Gardner using it to stress the importance of the vocabulary word of the day, iteration, as in repeating computational procedures applied to the result of a previous application as a means of obtaining the solution to a problem.
A student explains the programming and structure of his robot to Victor Saejis as teacher Donna Kruithof and Kathy Schofield listen. (Photo by Lorena Dominey)
In Suzanne Buckles’ second grade STEM class, students demonstrated how they used Lego Education’s BricQ Motion Essential to design levers that explore the motion of a basketball when scoring a three-point throw with the goal of using the data to score a perfect basket every time.
The group also saw Bobbi Okeson’s sixth-grade Cambridge math class students determining mean, median and mode and explaining their reasoning.
Then it was onto Crescent City Jr.-Sr. High School, where Donna Kruithof’s junior high computer science class students were creating structures with Lego Spike Prime using the process of design thinking, followed by Damon Frazee’s Algebra class studying data analysis and probability.
From left to right, Victor Saejis, president of Lego Education, Michael Helms, PCSD STEM specialist, Dr. Kathy Schofield, executive director of Northeast Florida Regional STEM2 Hub, Dr. Holly Gerlach, solution architect for Lego Education, Dr. Melissa Coleman, executive director of PCSD Federal Programs and Instructional Acceleration, Dr. Rick Surrency, superintendent of PCSD, Lorena Dominey, PCSD STEM resource teacher, Dr. Joseph Simmons, Florida Key Account Manager for Logo Education and Dan Merrill, head of Lego Education U.S. (Photo by Ashley McCool)
At the C.L. Overturf, Jr. District Center, Surrency and Kathy Schofield, executive director of Northeast Florida Regional STEM2 Hub and the district’s lead STEM partner, provided data demonstrating the impact STEM is having on Putnam’s students.
“I’m incredibly inspired by what is happening with STEM in the Putnam school district, by how Putnam is bringing STEM to all classes, all grades, all schools and how it’s positively impacting the students one-by-one”, Saejis said.
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