A project for libraries in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo!

A new project for libraries – Digital Citizen

THE STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) competencies and usage of new technologies became essential for modern societies and citizens. Problem solving skills and cooperation represent skills that are essential for the 21th century and equal participation of our citizens. The libraries are the focal places of knowledge in local communities and thus represent the best places for learning new skills and competencies.

Through this project IRIM will donate educational equipment – micro:bits and do it yourself electronic kits to libraries and will organize free educational workshops for librarians. We will educate librarians on how to use this educational equipment technologies so that librarians can organize free coding and digital making workshops for the public in their libraries.

The project will include 20 new libraries from Croatia, 20 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 20 from Serbia and 10 from Kosovo. Every library will receive:

• 20 micro:bits packed as a book, that can be used for borrowing and library workshops
• 5 do it yourself electronic kits as extensions for the micro:bits
• 3 free educational workshops for the librarians
• Complete support in developing the library to a digital innovation center

In the second stage of the project we will include 10 libraries from Croatia, 5 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 5 from Serbia and 5 from Kosovo.

They will receive 3D printers and the necessary education to introduce this technology in the libraries and make it available for citizens.

This technology will enable the libraries to continue the development which will enable to position themselves as real centers of innovation, with support from IRIM.

Application form – Digital Citizen

We invite you to APPLY and candidate your library for participation in this project. The deadline is 21st December 2018. until 23:59h.

About IRIM

IRIM (Institute for Youth Development and Innovativty) is a Croatia-based non-profit running the largest extracurricular STEM program in EU. It operates in Croatia as Croatian Makers movement, reaching over 100,000 children, but has transposed its activities to Serbia, BiH and Kosovo developing local partnerships, and then organizing joint regional activities.

IRIM’s mission is to empower all children in Croatia and the region to develop STEM competencies necessary for them to be equal citizens of 21st century, by delivering not only equipment, but also providing education and organizing numerous activities.

IRIM’s projects form a consistent portfolio of projects / family of platforms which can be represented as a pyramid. The most important is the base (introducing coding with micro:bits) for the largest possible number of children promoting equal opportunities, which leads to the top of the pyramid with advanced robotics competition and the advanced collaborative IoT project as described bellow. The projects are interconnected and are working following the principle that the quantity (size of the base) produces the quality (the top of the pyramid). At the same time, the top of pyramid is important for the base because it motivates the best participants to continue inside the system.

Other large IRIM’s projects include:

• Croatian Makers Robotics League, the largest competition of such kind in the EU with more than 10,000 children included in over 590 schools and non-profits. So far IRIM has donated around 3,000 robots. The concept of the League using the same robotics platform (mBot by Makeblock) has been successfully implemented in Serbia, BiH and Kosovo by local partners.
• Advanced regional robotic competition WER using advanced robotics sets by Abilix, enables participation of all the best regional teams from abovementioned leagues
• STEM car, a ‘modern era-moving library’ bringing free coding and robotics classes to less developed communities. STEM car is an ongoing project (in 2018. there were 6 cross-country tours lasting 2-4 weeks) and has already visited hundreds of villages and towns, with hundreds of workshops for thousands of pupils, introducing them to the world of technology and inducing them other IRIM’s activities
• IRIM uses several channels of knowledge distribution. The most importan one is IRIM’s content platform Izradi! (=Make!) (http://izradi.croatianmakers.hr/).

But especially worth noticing is the project STEM Revolution continues – Libraries, in which IRIM aims to empower public libraries to become centers for developing digital competencies in local communities. It is equivalent to e.g. Singapore’s national Digital Maker program aiming to transform the nation introducing technology to schools and families (using primarily micro:bit, as IRIM does).