Two Perry County students show off the 3D worlds they built on the Kai XR platform(above)
Students in grades 3 through 8 at Francis Marion School and Robert C. Hatch High School have taken part in more than 400 hours of STEM skill-building this year through a partnership between Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama and Kai XR Futures, the program’s organizers said.
The program, carried out under Superintendent Marcia Smiley, gives students early exposure to science, technology, engineering and math, engineering design, digital literacy and career awareness. Kai XR Futures is the programming arm of Kai XR, an education technology company whose platform uses virtual field trips and 3D building projects to teach STEM skills in the elementary and middle grades.
Alabama continues to grow in fields such as technology, advanced manufacturing, engineering and health care, the organizers said, and state workforce projections list industrial engineering, software development, information security and industrial machinery among the state’s fast-growing occupations.
For rural communities like Perry County, they said, preparing for that future starts early, and the partnership is meant to let students see what is possible, build confidence with new technologies and develop skills they can eventually bring back to their communities.
