I’ve been a big fan of Osmo products for years, and we have dozens of their kits at my school that we use on an almost daily basis. Osmo isn’t just for the classroom, though. They’ve recently branched out into Osmo Live Bootcamp classes with content for ages 5-11.
About Making The Grade: Every Saturday, Bradley Chambers publishes a new article about Apple in education. He has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.
In a time when a lot of children will be using distance learning in the fall, the Osmo Live Bootcamp classes will be an excellent option for parents. During the course, the teachers can survey children to understand how they are progressing, ensuring every child knows what they are doing. For communications, a speech-to-text function, live chat feature with emojis, and poll questions allow the teachers to incorporate live questions/answers into the class and multiple children to actively participate in discussions at a time without interrupting the flow of learning. Because only the teacher can broadcast, parents don’t have to worry about who else is in the class.
One of the aspects of Osmo that I love is how it blends online and offline integration. Children will complete the assignments using real-world tools while sharing feedback through the Osmo app. At the end of the class, teachers can provide personalized feedback on the activities, so they will know what to work on for next time.
Each session lasts an hour and includes two to three hours of extended activities after the class is over. In Art & Creativity, students learn drawing techniques. In Coding, they start developing STEM skills, and in Math, they explore how math impacts everyday life.
Each Osmo Bootcamp Live class is $150, and parents signing up for more than one will receive a $25 discount. To sign up, visit Osmo.live.
“The kids just started the new #osmolive classes from @playosmo! I picked the math class for ages 5–8 for them, but they also offer arts and coding classes all the way to age 11. Their teacher Micah was AMAZING and handled the class of about 50 kids effortlessly. The classes are about an hour long, once a week, for a 6 week session. The kids couldn’t see or hear each other (less distractions!) but they could interact through the comments. The teacher was also interacting directly to each kid which was really cute!”
