TOMORROW BUS
Student-Driven Innovation
STREAM experiences to elevate teaching and inspire student learning
What is it?
Through generous donations from local businesses, industries, and students’ time and talent, the Gresham-Barlow School District is proud to announce its first mobile STEAM lab: The Tomorrow Bus.
This mobile makerspace and tech lab facilitates a rotation of hands-on activities for students within the district that promotes science, technology, engineering, art, and math.
Why does it exist?
For our schools:
Oftentimes setting up a complex lab activity will get passed up for the sake of time in a class period or for cleaning up in a room.
But what if kids could take their classes outside and really dig into inspirational experiments?
Or would a lesson measuring sides of triangle be much more real with the side of a school bus, parachute cord, and sidewalk?
Pythagoras would be proud.
And the Tomorrow Bus is not a one-and-done service to classrooms.
Modeling our popular summer Tech Camps for Education, we partner with teachers providing ongoing instructional coaching which utilizes teacher content and pedagogy expertise combined with our knowledge of the latest tech and apps.
For the community in Gresham:
Although Portland museums do offer reduced fare, getting there can be a problem. Riding the MAX can get tricky depending on how far away you live, and parking is hit or miss.
That means a lot of Gresham’s kids don’t get to go downtown and see it for themselves. Looking at a youtube video of science experiments pales compared to doing it yourself.
We want to recreate the same “wow” factor kids have visiting hands-on museums. Positive and memorable experiences.
The reality of our world limits who can access the valuable resources deep in Portland’s downtown. For some families, the low-cost incentive of sites is outweighed heavily by the time spent driving to the museum or riding the mass-transit and risking missed transfers or less than friendly encounters.
Why the name "Tomorrow Bus"?
The Tomorrow Bus draws its name from inspirational visits to Disneyland’s Tomorrowland from our youth. Though the theme park has arguable interpretations as to what the future is and was considered (in the 50s), the impression left on us was always “what if”?
“Tomorrow” is future driven.
It’s peeking into the unknown at opportunities we didn’t even know were possible.
“Tomorrow” is an upcoming event, but the steps of those moments are yet defined.
We want kids to see what can be so they can make a path that could be.