Discover STEAM Inc. a 501(c)(3) nonprofit company
The Sustainable STEM Initiative
Professional Learning & Equipment
We remove barriers to high-quality STEM education for all students by providing comprehensive professional development, curriculum access, hands-on instructional practice, continuous support, and an equipment loaning program.
Our Impact at a Glance
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FY25 Launch: 7 educators (3 media specialists, 2 STEM focus teachers, 1 ELD teacher, and 1 classroom teacher) across 7 MCPS Community Schools.
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Student Reach: Impacted 1,590 K-5th grade students in our first semester, 49% of students experienced robotics and coding for the very first time!
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FY26 Momentum: 4 educators continued using our loaning program serving 900 students with hands-on robots & coding lessons.
Join Our FY27 Cohort
Discover STEAM is forming a new educator cohort for FY27!
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Who can Join: All educators are welcome to participate from any school, library or pre-school. The robot loaning program component is limited to Montgomery County. Robot purchase with a discount applied to the training is available to participants in any county.
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How to Join: Review the details and pre-register today to secure your spot. Once we hit capacity, a waitlist will open.
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Next Steps: Official registration forms (requiring your principal's signature) and procurement service contracts will be processed by the end of October.
Through combined funding from an MSDE (Maryland State Department of Education) grant and Discover STEAM Inc., we launched the Sustainable STEM Initiative. Our pilot program is focused on robots and coding. Additional STEM topics will be incorporated in the future. Sustainable STEM:Robots and Coding combined professional learning on three types of robots, with multiple coding modalities, equipment loaning to deliver lessons to students, teacher presentations to the cohort about their experience teaching with these robots, best practices and troubleshooting clinic, ongoing support, and a multi-year membership to our equipment loaning program.
Our pilot training cohort FY25
During our 1st session, teachers explore both the indi and bolt robots. Here teachers program the bolt robot to navigate an activity mat. The bolt robot has a programmable display panel and multiple sensors (motion, light, infrared, gyroscope, accelerometer, compass). Bolt can be programmed using drive-mode, draw-coding, block coding and JavaScript. (2nd - 12th grade)
bolt robot
In our 2nd professional learning session teachers work with the mini robots. These robots have less features than the bolt robot and are much smaller. Mini robots can be programmed through drive-mode, draw-mode, block coding and JavaScript. (2nd - 8th grade)
mini robot
In our 3rd session of professional learning, participants present lesson(s) they delivered to their classes. This presentation is about the indi car robot, it has a color sensor that can detect colors and respond to the code of each color. The code can be changed in an app via bluetooth. Indi can use draw-coding, drive-mode and color coding. (PreK - 3rd grade)
indi robot
Services include:
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3 - 2 hour In-person Professional Learning
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Lesson Plans
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Technical Support
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Robot Loaning (or purchase)
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Indi car (preK-3rd grade)
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Sphero mini (2nd-6th grade)
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Bolt (3rd -12th grade)
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Robot Loaning Program- 2 yrs membership
Cost: $2,500
Discounts
1) Additional staff from the same school can participate for only $650.
2) If you purchase a classroom set(s) of robots through this professional learning program, we will discount the training $200
Tentative dates In-person trainings are January 9th & 23rd, and May 15, 2027 (Saturdays 10:30 - 12:30, in Montgomery County, TBD)
FY27 Cohort forming for the Sustainable STEM Initiative: Robots & Coding Program
