As schools and youth advocacy groups look to improve equity and access in providing more effective science and tech education resources and programming in educational environments, other organizations are focusing on the critical afterschool period, in which students spend 80% of their waking hours.  The Afterschool Tech Toolkit seeks to address the challenges faced by many children after they’re out of school for the day, which includes the facts that:

  • Five million households with school age children do not have internet service at home, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S.
    Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
  • Without equitable access to technology after school, students fall behind: this is often referred to as“the homework gap.
  • Afterschool programs are key to the success of disadvantaged youth, with 45 percent of students enrolled in afterschool programs coming are from low-income households and
  • Afterschool programs are shown to positively impact in school performance

The Afterschool Tech Toolkit  is designed for those who lead or oversee out-of-school programs in various settings including schools, community-based organizations, private organizations, churches, libraries and homeless shelters. Currently the online resource features about a half dozen training modules covering things like training staff and promoting equity in programs, as well as a number of scheduled online webinars. The site also has a couple of good research papers, like Empowering AfterSchool Professionals for Digital Learning.

The modules seem a little lightweight, at this early stage of development, but as you move through them, some pretty stellar resources reveal themselves, like this Tech Inventory Checklist  in the Access Technology and Devices module.  Overall the new toolkit provides a solid stepping off point for beefing up afterschool tech programming with some good resources, and also links back to the National Afterschool Alliance, which has a rich collection of additional tools and resources for those working with afterschool programs.

We’ve added the Afterschool Tech Toolkit to our STEM Education Resources section on our Resources page and recommend signing up at the website to stay updated on new material, as well as to contribute your own.