Spotlight 4 Success

STEM For Every Student

• American Book Company • Season 1

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The future of work isn’t waiting, and neither are we. From a bustling floor at the South Carolina Library Association Conference, we sit down with Collin Robinson, executive director at 21st Century Ed, to unpack a simple idea with big ambition: bring STEM to every learner early, often, and everywhere. You’ll hear how a community-first approach that links school districts, public libraries, local businesses, and universities can turn curiosity into skills that match real jobs shaped by automation and AI.

Website: spotlight4success.com 

SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I'm Devin Pentosi, your host. We are here in wonderful Columbia, South Carolina, at the South Carolina Librarian Association Conference. And we are here joined by our very special guest. This is uh Colin Robinson. Colin, thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00:

Pleasure to be here. Pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_01:

Colin is the executive director of 21st Century Ed. Uh Colin, uh, thank you for joining us today. I am honored to be here. All right. Colin, tell me a bit about your journey. What brings you here to the South Carolina Librarian Association show?

SPEAKER_00:

So uh this is um uh an exceptional opportunity for us to come and and and and share the work that we're doing at 21st Century Yed, you know, where our mission is to uh revolutionize education by uh providing STEM to every student early, often, and everywhere. That is our mission. We believe that uh STEM or STEAM is not just for the smart kids, uh as it's been approached, because STEM is in everything. And if uh we look at how technology, automation, AI is changing the workforce, we have to prepare students differently. And students, if you really look at it, we believe students every student have their own genius, right? And the student just don't know what they don't know. So if you expose students to the right thing and expose them to STEM, they'll see that STEM isn't everything. Cooking, the way you and if you think about it, you look at streaming television, uh, you um enjoy uh your free time. You know, technology is impacting everything. So we definitely have to prepare students uh differently because the the opportunities that are waiting for them are being defined and created by technology. So we have to do differently. So that's our mission.

SPEAKER_01:

That's that's wonderful, Colin. Uh can you let me know uh what uh what things uh does uh does 21st Century Ed provide that um helps help uh help librarians uh and students uh figure out how to make those those STEM steam related jobs.

SPEAKER_00:

So uh interestingly enough, we we uh work primarily in the K-12 space. Okay. So we'll work with librarians that are in this in the schools, and so oftentimes uh in the library we'll have students want to do some career exploration, okay, and we can they can use our platform for that work in the schools. But with the general uh library, uh we see that as a resource in the community. And we believe that in order for the school districts to be successful, they can't do it alone. You have to embrace the community. We have to get the community involved. So that community could be the libraries, the churches, the businesses. The businesses are there because they are the ones that are going to know the new skills that are needed for the jobs that are coming, right? That are being affected. So it's great for the school district to partner with those um businesses, but it's also partner with your local library, after school programs for students. So we'll work with those libraries to do that. Um, you know, we're doing an interesting project right now with a city where they're looking to upskill individuals that have dropped out of school. Okay. Right? And we're gonna build these certification type solutions where you know folks that are interested in finding work entry-level positions can take these certification prep courses to prepare so that they can study for the exams. And they can deploy those in the library. Oh wow. Right? So again, helping that partnership with the general library, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh yeah, sure does. Sure does, Colin. And uh, so you here you are at the conference. Um, are you are did you did you say you were presenting here?

SPEAKER_00:

No, I didn't present. We just I just came as uh part of uh just one of the exhibitors here, okay. Um working with in co um in conjunction with HHS, uh their education division of hospitality uh hospital and I I forgot the name of HHS, but we're working in conjunction with them um at the booth where we wanted to um Clemson University is a partner of theirs, okay, and again, they wanted to us to come in and show how we could support libraries with bringing STEM education to uh students that's great and the general public.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's wonderful. How did you how did you get involved with 21st Century Ed?

SPEAKER_00:

So it's interesting. Um the the founder and CEO of 21st Century, uh Marlon Lindsay and I went to college together. Wow. Um UConn, University of Connecticut. Yeah, y'all go back. Yeah, we'll go back. And um he literally got me into the ed tech space. Um we uh prior to 21st Century Ed, we both he was working at a company called Imagine Learning, which focused on teaching literacy how to read to English language learners. And at the time, um I was looking for something else to do. Um I was pushed there. My son suggested, my youngest son at the time suggested that I do something else because I was a little bit hard to talk to. And uh out of uh childcome wisdom, they say. And so um, you know, Marlon and I, we kept in touch over the years, we're really close friends, and he's like, you should uh take a look at Imagine Learning. It's doing some amazing work. We're changing lives, you know, uh teaching kids to read. And so I joined that company, and then Marlon moved on to start this um opportunity here. Uh he's an evangelist for STEM education, STEM literacy. And he said, hey, you know, I'd like for you to come uh and and uh work with me here at 21st Century Ed, and so I've been doing this for five years. Wow. And it's it's just been amazing. Some of the work that we're doing with school districts and with public libraries, uh, where we put on these STEM events, right? Okay, and uh it's called a STEM expo, um, where we will do an event in a school, like a school gym. Uh we have done larger ones that we call STEM fests, where we take up like an entire stadium. Like we did one for the Yankees Stadium at one point. But it's an opportunity to engage the community, right? We bring the community in and business owners, parents, parents come in and get to see their children doing things that they otherwise wouldn't see. Wow. Um, you know, in these STEM expos, we'll have things like uh where kids get to interact with robots, they do drones, they fly drones. We'll have activities for them to do. We give them a project. Okay. So imagine, like uh, I used to man the drone station. So I I've I really like this one, where we'll say, okay, you're working with Amazon. Amazon's about to start delivering packages using drones. And your job is to deliver build a container to deliver this product from point A to point B. And we give the kids real everyday materials, paper clips, rubber bands, paper, and they have to construct something. Wow. And with little direction, they just go to work. Wow. And it's amazing when a kid who never would have thought they could do something like this, and the light bulb goes off, and they see what they delivered, where they are able to build that thing and fly it from point A to point B, it's amazing. And uh it's life-changing. The parents are there, they're just wow, seeing their kid do something that they otherwise wouldn't see. The business owners are in, they're and then that whole nucleus of the community comes together, right? The businesses are there, they're saying, okay, the school district is really doing something special here. We need to work with the school districts, right? The librarians are there. We can how can we utilize the libraries to now get this information out to the students? Because we believe our mantra is we should provide STEM early, often, and everywhere. Oh, okay. Wherever that child is. So that's that's how that's that's that's how we do it.

SPEAKER_01:

I love it. I I love uh you know this this getting these teams together, doing the STEM steam, and through that they have to use all that uh SEL thing too, right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah, SCL is is is very important. That socialemotional learning is is is um is incredible because uh you know we do some work with um early childhood development as well, and social emotional learning is huge part of that. Yeah, so um, yeah, that's that's that's the work. We're really passionate uh about the work that we do in terms of um bringing the opportunity to each and every child. We think that every child has their own genius and we're gonna find a way to bring it out.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that is so awesome. And uh, Colin, how can uh people find out about uh 21st century learning?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, so they can go to uh 21stcenturyed.com, that's our website. Um and uh That's to uh 21 STER 21 ST CenturyEd. Okay 21stcenturyed.com. That's our website, and all the information is there. It talks about all the work that we're doing. Um, it has information in where you can download use cases so you can see current actual current examples of the work that we're doing across the country and across the world. We're doing work in Jamaica, we're doing work in St. Lucia. Oh wow, so it's it's yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing work.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, it's wonderful. Thank you so much, Colin, for joining us today. Again, Colin Robinson, twenty firstcenturyed.com. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Appreciate it.