New EdTech Company Forward Education Setting Out to Make Climate Action Education Mainstream in the Midst of Unprecedented Wildfire Season
KITCHENER ON | JUNE 19, 2023 - A new Canadian edtech startup named Forward Education is setting out to make climate change education mainstream with their Climate Action Kits for teaching coding and robotics in K-12 classrooms. The kits help students and educators understand and create prototypes of real-world technology solutions to climate change issues while advancing STEM education.
“The wildfires raging across Canada are a warning signal for what our future looks like without taking action against climate change,” said Forward Education CEO Jeremy Hedges. “The technology solutions exist today to tackle these challenges head on, but we need generations of inspired youth to help create a brighter future.”
Forward Education's Climate Action Kits make the process of teaching and learning coding easy, exciting and purposeful for students and teachers alike. Using the online interactive lessons, students are introduced to a variety of climate change issues and their technological solutions. Students then use the kit's hardware, building blocks, and physical computing components to code and build their own working prototypes by following step-by-step coding tutorials. These projects can be as simple as creating a windmill for renewable energy or as challenging as building an automated tree seeding vehicle to combat deforestation.
Powered by the BBC micro:bit and Microsoft’s MakeCode software, the Forward Education team has developed a learning system for coding and robotics unlike anything else on the market today. Teachers with no prior experience can pick up a kit and start teaching in their classrooms tomorrow - it’s remarkably simple for something that can seem so daunting.
Forward Education is a spinoff from Canadian EdTech company InkSmith, who have been providing 21st-century STEM technology products and professional development for educators for the past seven years. The same leadership team was also behind The Canadian Shield, a PPE supplier and rapid test distributor that scaled to more than $80-million in sales in the span of 18 months and placed fourth on the Globe and Mail’s annual ranking of fastest growing companies in 2021.
The Climate Action Kits will officially launch at the ISTELIVE ‘23 education technology conference in Philadelphia in June where the team hopes to bring coding and climate action education together in the US and around the world.
The Forward Education team believes that by teaching these skills and contextualizing STEM with real-world climate action opportunities, teachers can give students hope for the future and inspire them to be tomorrow’s changemakers.
ABOUT FORWARD EDUCATION
Forward Education is a spinoff from Canadian EdTech company, InkSmith. Our mission is to empower the next generation with purpose-driven STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education with a focus on helping students understand and solve problems related to climate change. Collaborating closely with educators, we aim to drive the future of education forward and inspire the changemakers of tomorrow.
Website: www.forwardedu.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/forward__edu/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Forward.EDU.Learn
Twitter:https://twitter.com/Forward__EDU
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/forward-edu
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Rachael Marshall