The Girl Scouts of Montana and Wyoming are ready to roll with mobile STEM classes.
Yellowstone public radio’s Orlinda Worthington got a tour of the new learning van.
Brianna Rickman is the director of development for the Girl Scout Council of Montana and Wyoming. She says the Mobile Learning Center van will bring Science, Technology, Education and Math to underserved students in remote areas.
“And between the two, about 67% of the population live in rural communities, and there's just not as many resources available to girls in those communities. So this stem van is going to allow us to travel around and visit these rural and tribal communities throughout and be able to provide them with the same opportunities that girls have in larger communities,” said Rickman.
Dahlia has been a Girl Scout for more than two years. She stated that she never really was interested in STEM classes until she saw the van.
“There's gonna be a lot of 3D prints, like 3D printers in here, like laptops in here. There's gonna be just all this cool stuff. Um, Oculus is the VR headsets. It's like a VR headset that you wear, so like you have this virtual world. Also, 3D pens are another thing… it's a pen that you insert like plastic into and it melts it and you basically just get a drop with it and make stuff,” she said.
The learning van activities will be run by a STEM program specialist and open to all kids, both boys and girls and non-scout members.
Spectrum provided a $15,000 digital education grant for the STEM van.
A schedule of stops can be found at gsmw.org
