STEM Courses

This week President Obama announced that he was going to provide additional funding for teachers who teach STEM courses. If you do not know what STEM stands for - here goes [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math]. Expanding these programs and encouraging students to enter fields based on these courses will, hopefully, bring our children up to par with other countries. Where does my company fit it? What does an occupational therapist have to do with these courses? Well, occupational therapy is an evidence based profession relying on research studies to back up the treatments that we provide. An occupational therapist is trained in the remediation of fine motor skills, posture and cognitive function. We are encouraging students to think about solving problems and examining data, in other words 'Computational Thinking.' Computational thinking is integrating the power of human thinking with the capabilities of computers. csta.acm.org/Resources/sub/highlightedResources.html Some students, due to motoric and cognitive concerns, are not meeting the standards. We help students improve the ability to interact with the computer by improving keyboarding skills and working with industry standard programming. In addition, there are some students who require some form of assistive technology programming to support their ability to learn. We help students, needing assistive technology, to become more proficient in using not only the technology but also integrating that technology with industry standard programming. By integrating the programs, it is our hope that students will be able to engage in STEM coursework and fulfill their potential.