Illinois-based organization GreenApple has released a new STEM education platform this month aimed at providing training tools for the technological, scientific, and data-driven careers that are quickly becoming the highest-paid and most in-demand occupations around.
The SaaS digital platform aims to enable educators and entrepreneurs to bring STEM – i.e., science, technology, engineering, and math – education courses to their classrooms, camps, after school programs, workshops, and organizations. The platform empowers students of all ages to become STEM-proficient through rich multimedia offering hands-on activities, a virtual coaching tool for additional support, and game-based assessment.
Based in the Naperville, GreenApple’s innovative platform is striking while the iron is hot. STEM jobs are among the highest paid – with a salary around double that of other jobs according to the US Department of Labor – and yet, as economist Katie Bardaro told Forbes, there is still a lack of new graduates in these fields.
And the demand for these jobs is growing. According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in STEM-based occupations is projected to grow to more than 9 million between 2012 and 2022 – an increase of around 1 million jobs.
By bringing courses and tools to any web-enabled device, GreenApple is helping educators and businesses to both meet an ever-growing demand and to do so through what is becoming the medium of choice. Education technology, whose worth was estimated at over $8 billion in the Education Technology Industry Network’s “2014 U.S. Education Technology Industry Market: PreK-12 Report,” is expected to be a $15 billion dollar industry by 2020.
GreenApple, CEO Dee Guiney explains the platform is a pioneer in the STEM education market rather than an opportunistic latecomer. With 15 years of experience providing STEM education to several thousands of students, Guiney says, “We were doing STEM before STEM was cool!”
GreenApple has a tradition of such forward-thinking training programs that has been bringing education to the forefront of emerging technologies. In addition to GreenApple®STEM, the organization boasts a GirlsTech program that empowers young women through technical and computing training, as well as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality programs that let kids design their own AR and VR projects and applications.
