Author: itsupport

  • New classroom-ready STEAM projects are on the way

    New classroom-ready STEAM projects are on the way

    The GENSTEAMERs consortium reviewed the formal school curricula of Spain, Greece, Ireland, and Serbia to identify common themes and educational practices that could support innovative STEAM learning. Based on the feedback retrieved by school partners, we developed 10 project scenarios designed to promote the meaningful integration of Generative AI into STEM education.

    Teachers from the four partner countries reviewed these scenarios, evaluating their educational value, classroom feasibility, and potential to foster student engagement. Based on their feedback, the four most promising scenarios were selected for further development.

    The project has now progressed to the collaborative design of detailed project overviews, which are being transformed into classroom-ready resources, including teacher guides, student worksheets, and supporting materials. Throughout this process, we particularly emphasise promoting creativity, critical thinking and the meaningful use of Generative AI.

    A quick glimpse into the 4 projects

    Chatting with AI introduces students to conversational AI by exploring how chatbots work before designing a simple chatbot of their own. Students explore both the strengths and limitations of AI-generated responses while learning about user input, response design, testing, and improvement through accessible tools such as Scratch or school-approved chatbot platforms.

    Our Screen Time encourages students to analyse screen-time data from their own devices or anonymised class datasets. Acting as a thinking partner, Generative AI helps students generate hypotheses, explore alternative interpretations, and ask “what-if” questions, while students critically test these ideas using evidence and statistical reasoning.

    In Mapping Time: Journeys in Data, students collect and analyse data from meaningful journeys, manually calculating key statistics before using Generative AI as a creative partner to transform their verified data into personalised Time Maps, where distances are represented by travel time rather than physical space. The project combines mathematics, geography, visual arts, and data literacy in authentic real-life contexts.

    Finally, The Monopoly Game challenges students to uncover the mathematical functions hidden within Monopoly’s pricing system. After verifying AI-generated mathematical models using manual calculations or GeoGebra, students become game designers by modifying the rules and exploring how mathematical changes influence fairness, economic balance, and decision-making.

    The development of these projects and related resources is supported by an iterative co-design process involving consortium partners and teachers. Feedback collected during teacher training activities in Athens and Spain, together with insights from the two pilot implementation rounds, will be continuously used to refine and strengthen the educational resources.

    Stay tuned for exciting classroom-ready STEAM resources that combine creativity, critical thinking, and responsible AI use – they are on their way!

  • STEM Curriculum Analysis in 4 Countries

    STEM Curriculum Analysis in 4 Countries

    Generative AI is entering classrooms quickly, but teachers still lack clear, curriculum‑aligned guidance for using it responsibly. This report shows that existing lower secondary STEM curricula already offer strong, well‑guarded opportunities for GenAI‑enhanced inquiry and critical thinking, giving GenSTEAMers a solid foundation for practical, classroom‑ready work.

    GenSTEAMers is an international Erasmus+ cooperation project that explores how Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) can be meaningfully integrated into STEAM education to support both teaching and learning, with teachers’ experience, needs, and classroom realities as the starting point for innovation. Within this wider, teacher‑centred project, this report is the first major research output: a cross-country analysis of how lower secondary STEM curriculum goals can be responsibly connected to GenAI, with a particular focus on creativity and critical thinking in classroom practice. It is designed to give teachers, school leaders, and project partners a clear picture of where GenAI can support learning, and what safeguards are needed to keep student reasoning at the centre.

    Before any classroom tools, scenarios, or training materials are created, the consortium needed to understand how existing lower secondary curriculum objectives in Ireland, Greece, Serbia, and Spain (Galicia) already support inquiry, modelling, data handling, and ethical discussion, and where GenAI could add value and foster creativity and critical thinking, in a carefully supervised way. This resulting report provides this evidence base, positioning curriculum‑anchored opportunities and risks so that later design and piloting phases have a clear, shared reference point.

    The work was carried out between October 2025 and January 2026 by a partnership of practising STEM teachers, curriculum specialists, and education researchers in the four participating countries. Using a shared data collection template and codebook, the team reviewed and coded 153 curriculum entries and synthesised 136 lower secondary objectives (ISCED Level 2), looking at subject area, objective type (such as conceptual knowledge, procedural skills, design/engineering, inquiry, data handling, modelling, ethics), cross-cutting competences, possible GenAI uses, risk levels, teacher guardrails, and implementation status.

    A stage-based inclusion rule ensured that only objectives explicitly labelled as lower secondary (12-15yrs) were included in the cross-country thematic analysis, with 17 other entries retained for transparency but excluded from the synthesis. Through this collaborative process, the partners identified six reusable pedagogical alignment patterns and nine cross-country themes and practices that together describe lesson structures and project framings teachers can recognise and adapt in their own classrooms.

    Methodologically, the report focuses on envisaged rather than currently observed classroom use. Across the four systems, student-facing GenAI use was still very limited, so the mapped AI roles reflect professionally plausible, curriculum-aligned scenarios rather than established routines. No objective in the dataset was coded as Established Practice; implementation remains exploratory or emerging, which is why GenAI is treated as a co‑pilot to be questioned and verified, not as an autopilot for solving STEM tasks. Teachers consistently highlighted Accuracy/Validity and Over‑Reliance as dominant risks, shaping the emphasis on verification steps, critique protocols, and visual or data-based checking throughout the patterns and themes.

    Within GenSTEAMers, the purpose of this report is threefold. It shows that there is already strong alignment potential between existing lower secondary STEM curricula and responsible GenAI integration, without major syllabus changes, directly informing the design of classroom‑ready teaching scenarios. It distils this potential into practical design language, giving the consortium a shared vocabulary for structuring GenAI‑enhanced activities. This includes concept clarification, inquiry design, pattern identification, and model exploration, which will feed into the GenSTEAMers Action Plan Kit and the digital Teacher Hub and it sets out the design principles and constraints for the forthcoming Action Plan Kit, specifying the kinds of GenAI roles, risk mitigations, and assessment focuses that classroom resources must embody if they are to foster both STEAM competences and critical AI literacy. In this way, the report is not only a research output but the structural foundation from which GenSTEAMers will build and iteratively refine concrete, classroom‑ready tools, project exemplars, and professional development materials, in close collaboration with teachers and schools.

    Reports are available in Englsih, Serbian, Greek, and Spanish languages and may be found in the Results section of this website.

  • GenSTEAMers Project Kicks Off in Dublin

    GenSTEAMers Project Kicks Off in Dublin

    The GenSTEAMers project officially launched with a two-day kick-off meeting in Dublin on January 26–27, bringing together partners from across Europe to align on the project’s vision, structure, and next steps.

    Hosted by the Irish partners, the meeting marked the beginning of a collaborative effort to support teachers in integrating Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) into STEAM education in ways that are practical, inclusive, and pedagogically meaningful.

    Building a Shared Vision for GenAI in Education

    The first day of the meeting focused on the foundations of the project, particularly the work of WP2 – Research & GenAI Tools Selection. Partners discussed how early research findings will guide the development of the GenSTEAMers Action Plan Kit (APK), ensuring it aligns with curriculum requirements and is directly usable by teachers in real classroom settings.

    A key emphasis throughout discussions was maintaining a user-centred approach, focusing on student impact, equity, and personalisation. Partners highlighted the importance of designing solutions that are not only innovative, but also accessible and adaptable across different educational contexts.

    Designing Practical Tools for Teachers

    The development of the Action Plan Kit under WP3 was a central topic, with partners exploring how to structure classroom projects that teachers can realistically implement. Discussions addressed how many projects should be developed, how they should be phased across pilot stages, and how to ensure they remain flexible enough to suit different national contexts.

    A strong consensus emerged around the need for:

    • Practical, ready-to-use guidance for teachers
    • Tool-agnostic approaches, focusing on transferable skills rather than specific AI tools
    • Iterative refinement, allowing improvements based on real classroom experience

    The concept of a Teacher Hub as a digital community of practice was also introduced, aiming to support teachers throughout the implementation phase.

    Grounding Innovation in Classroom Reality

    On the second day, discussions shifted to WP4 – School Piloting, with partners reflecting on the realities teachers face in classrooms. These included large class sizes, limited support structures, and the additional workload associated with professional development.

    Partners emphasised that successful implementation will depend on:

    • Sustainable and realistic approaches
    • Strong teacher support systems, including peer-to-peer learning
    • Careful alignment between training and actual classroom practice

    The piloting process will follow a phased approach, beginning with small-scale validation and gradually expanding to additional schools, ensuring that solutions are tested and refined before scaling.

    Impact, Dissemination, and Scaling

    The meeting also included a dedicated session on WP5 – Impact, Evaluation, Dissemination & Scaling.

    WP5 outlines a comprehensive approach to:

    • Measuring project impact at multiple levels
    • Collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, including surveys, focus groups, and interviews
    • Supporting dissemination and communication across partner countries
    • Developing scaling strategies to extend project results beyond pilot schools

    Particular attention was given to ensuring that evaluation is meaningful and aligned with project priorities, as well as to the creation of a Community of AI Teaching Practice, which will support long-term sustainability of project outcomes.

    Looking Ahead

    The Dublin meeting concluded with clear next steps, including:

    • Finalising the structure of the Action Plan Kit and project-based learning scenarios
    • Scheduling upcoming workshops and teacher training activities
    • Developing a dissemination tracking system to support WP5 indicators
    • Gathering input from teachers on preferred communication platforms for the future community

    As the project moves forward, partners will continue working closely to ensure that GenSTEAMers delivers practical, evidence-based solutions that empower teachers and enhance learning experiences for students across Europe.