MyStemKits | The Best Thing in Education Since The Magic School Bus

The average starting salary for a teacher in the state of Georgia is $33,664. On top of this, the Georgia State Legislature (has) cut more than $8.4 billion in funding for public schools in recent years. This places Georgia as 35th in the nation in spending per student, investing nearly $1,400 less per student than the national average of $10,608. Consequently, many teachers have to tap into their own salaries’ for school supplies. MyStemKits is striving to change this and is currently raising money on Kickstarter to achieve their goal.

Cofounder, CEO, and Atlanta native Laron Walker is a businessman, technology specialist, and electrical engineer with over 18 years of entrepreneurial experience. He and his coounder/3D modeler, Hannah Olson are designing 3D educational manipulatives (objects used in the classroom to engage in hands on learning) that are affordable and come with a specifically designed curriculum. After speaking with hundreds of teachers, Walker saw that they “just (don’t) have the supplies necessary for their classroom. Our kits and curriculum help the teachers by making the supplies affordable. And more than that, we save them time by selling all our kits with vetted curriculum so that they don’t have to rework their plans just to work with their new objects.”

Walker and Olson want to change this current teaching reality. “We saw a need for affordable educational manipulatives, learned about 3D printing technology, and saw that these two arenas could come together to form the solution. It started with a couple ideas: pulleys, I-beams, etc. And the more we worked with the printers, the more the ideas kept coming, and we really began to see the (almost) infinite possibilities that could come of this,” says Walker.

They’ve teamed up with Florida State University’s CPALMS team and have used their years of curriculum writing experience to design kits that go hand in hand. MyStemKits lesson plans are all-inclusive. Complete with guiding questions, videos, assembly instructions, and worksheets for students, “it comes ready for them, which is especially good for some of our other markets – libraries, homeschoolers, after school programs, where the adult may not be an expert in all the science and math being covered,” he explains.

I see this revolutionizing schools across the country. Why buy heavy, bulky lab supplies when you can buy something much more cost-effective, light, and easy to store, and which is designed for the classroom. It also has the potential for great impact in the homeschooling and after school program worlds.

MyStemKits just opened a new office in Midtown Atlanta, and are launching a series of new initiatives focused on technology and education. If this is a cause you believe in, check out their Kickstarter page, and look out for their lab supplies in a classroom near you.

Follow MyStemKits on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/My-Stem-Kits/413318435494425
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mystemkits

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