Embracing Screen Time with Osmo: A Balancing Act for Positive Learning

/

In today's digital age, the topic of screen time for children has been a subject of much debate among parents and educators. Concerns over excessive exposure to screens leading to potential negative impacts on development are valid, but what if we told you that screen time can be harnessed positively as a powerful educational tool?

Osmo - a cutting-edge learning device that seamlessly blends the digital world with hands-on play. By exploring the benefits of using Osmo as a learning device, we shed light on the notion that screen time is not entirely detrimental if utilized responsibly and with a purposeful approach.

 

Osmo: The Bridge Between Physical and Digital Learning

Osmo takes a unique approach to learning by creating a bridge between the physical and digital worlds. The platform employs a base that attaches to a tablet's camera and reflects real-world objects onto the screen. This enables children to interact with the digital apps through tangible objects such as letter tiles, drawing tools, and number blocks. The combination of hands-on activities and digital interactivity enhances engagement, creativity, and critical thinking in a way that traditional screen time alone cannot achieve.

Benefits of Playing with Osmo

The Power of Purposeful Play

Educational experts have long stressed the importance of play-based learning in a child's development. Osmo's carefully curated apps embrace this philosophy by offering a wide range of interactive games and activities that target various educational domains. From fostering early math skills to promoting language development and problem-solving abilities, Osmo's purposeful play keeps children entertained while cultivating essential skills.

Learning with Parental Engagement

One of the remarkable aspects of Osmo is its potential to promote parent-child engagement in the learning process. Many Osmo activities encourage collaborative play, allowing parents to actively participate alongside their children. This not only strengthens the bond between parents and their young learners but also provides valuable opportunities for parents to guide, motivate, and support their children's learning journey.

Personalized Learning Experience

Every child is unique, and Osmo acknowledges this fact by offering a diverse range of apps suitable for various age groups and skill levels. The customizable nature of Osmo's learning experiences ensures that children can progress at their own pace, fostering a sense of accomplishment and boosting their confidence along the way.

Cultivating 21st-Century Skills

As we prepare our children for an increasingly digital world, it is essential to equip them with the skills required to thrive in the 21st century. Osmo's interactive platform promotes the development of skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, and digital literacy - competencies that are highly valued in today's rapidly evolving society.

Finding the Balance

While Osmo offers a remarkable opportunity to leverage screen time for positive learning experiences, finding the right balance remains key. As with any form of technology, moderation is essential. It is crucial for parents and educators to set reasonable time limits for screen use, ensuring that children have ample opportunities for physical activity, social interactions, and imaginative play offline.

Conclusion

Osmo stands as a testament to the potential benefits of embracing screen time as a learning device. By seamlessly blending digital interactivity with hands-on play, Osmo provides children with a holistic and engaging educational experience. When used purposefully and in moderation, Osmo can undoubtedly play a transformative role in children's development, preparing them to thrive in an ever-evolving digital landscape while preserving the essence of creativity, exploration, and joy that comes with childhood learning.

What is STEM.org certification? Why do I need a STEM certification?

/

We are very honored to share with you the news that our subsidiary, Toy Brain has been around for about a year and a half since the establishment date. In the fourth quarter of 2020, we finally passed the international organization STEM.org certification, becoming the first and only one who get STEM education system certification in Taiwan, and the world's first professional platform dedicated for promoting STEM education, we are truly honored! After that, we will be able to do our best in STEM education for young children.

Toy Brain becomes Taiwan's first and only one who passed STEM.org education system certification

We believe that STEM education has a very important role on future children, that’s why we decided to promote STEM education in a more comprehensively. In addition to obtaining the STEM cross-disciplinary scientific certification of domestic successful universities through examinations, we should apply for STEM at an international official institution. Certification, on the one hand, challenge yourself to see that your hard work has paid off, and on the other hand, passing the international certification will make you more confident and proud that you are being responsible to consumers.

After two oral exams in full English and a long series of test papers to test our founder acknowledge about STEM, future business models, and the management level skills - no pain no gain, they said - Toy Brain finally get the honor of STEM.org certification. It means that Toy Brain is the first platform who is able to pass the international STEM certification in Taiwan. It is such a thrilling news for our BabyLux big family!

 

What is STEM.ORG certification?

STEM.org is a Detroit-based company founded by Andrew B. Raupp. Since 2001, STEM education has been promoted to the whole United States and then to the world. It has been more than 20 years and has been recognized by the U.S. Senate, mentoring and cooperating with more than 2,000 schools and with more than 100,000 students, it has strong credibility in the industry.

In order to strengthen and promote the credibility of STEM even more, STEM.org has carried out a badge certification campaign for People, Product and Program, and in 2022 they added Publishers as certification category. This certification cannot be purchased through payment to maintain and ensure the credibility of the certification.

This time, Toy Brain applied for the "Program" category with the platform content. After multiple layers of auditing standards, it was finally affirmed by the reviewers and certified by STEM.org. It is worth mentioning that, in order to ensure unchangeable, absolute fairness, the STEM.org certification data will even be synchronized to the blockchain, which means that for those who have officially obtained STEM.org certification, the qualification will exist forever within the time limit. become an established fact.

Let’s take a look at the STEM.org certification differences. There are three certifications in total: green, orange, and red, which are certified for different target groups.

Green is for people, the world’s original, digital STEM credential for people.

The first educator in Taiwan, Wang Xiangyu, to be awarded the STEM.org People category, is currently the founding chairman of the Asia Pacific STEM Education Association.

Mr. Leung Sicong, the director of Education and Exhibits Department of Macau Science Museum, he is the first person in Macau to obtain STEM.org Macau certification.

Orange is for products, our Newmero from Denmark has the orange trustmark.

Taiwan’s Eagle Lab also has the orange trustmark.

The red ones are STEM.org's trustmark for Programs, which accredits the entire education system, principles, and methods.

 

STEM.org Certification Standards

In order to get the eligible mark as in the picture above, the content of the website, the products, the quality of team members, and even the company's future vision, social responsibility, goals, and management direction and methods must meet the organization standards. Here are some general guidelines for reference:

1. Themes

STEM.org has multiple committee members evaluating whether the platform's content themes are closely related to the core value of STEM or not, including science, engineering, technology and math.

2. Bringing new literacy for the 21st century

Evaluating whether the content of the platform can help develop new literacy in the 21st century, such as creativity, independent thinking, and solving problems encountered in life.

3. Educational

Evaluating whether the assessment content helps parents and children understand STEM better, whether it provides practical teaching methods or practices, and many more.

4. Diversity

Evaluating whether the content of has diversity and can provide rich teaching resources.

5. STEM allign products

Evaluate whether the products recommended and sold on the website are different from other ordinary toys, and evaluating they are not only a toys but also a teaching tools with STEM educational values.

 

Why applying STEM.org certification?

After Toy Brain team has gotten in touch with many parents and kindergartens educators, we found that many of them has already know about educational toys or teaching toys from their daily life or work. But they didn’t have a deep understanding of STEM, they didn’t understand how to use them as teaching tools, and there is no way to know the safety of goods, or whether it has the value of STEM education.

Some even blindly listened to the sales, who did not guide the understanding of the STEM core values. They believed that buying a material package to assemble, buying a robot, and playing programming represented the complete STEM. For this reason, we established and launched a the system to pre-school, to reduce the problems that teachers and parents are facing, and of course we want to establish the correct way to promote STEM.

 

Why should you only trust a platform with certification?

1. Toy Brain has improved the review standards of all products on the shelves, we will help you check the toys with STEM value and even certification at the beginning, so that you can easily choose good toys that allow children to learn things on our platform.

2. We have passed the STEM.org international organization certification, to ensure that we are reliable and accurate while we speaking of the STEM value.

3. Toy Brain also expects ourselves to have the ability and responsibility to influence the big environment, from developing a small theme to influence our next generation, so that they are able to play openly, play correctly, learn while playing, and cultivate their abilities to solve problems in life.

At this stage, there are many people who want to take the trend of STEM. The original intention of creating the platform of Toy Brain was to give everyone a thorough and correct understanding about STEM. STEM education might give you an ‘unsure’ feeling, it seems that no one can see and explain what is STEM clearly, but in fact it is only because the lack of understanding. In order to solve this problem, we invited scholars with professional experience, or members of the Taiwan Toy Education Association, as well as many first-line kindergarten teachers with practical experience, who want to promote STEM education but feel that there is no suitable place to promote. We are here, ready to work with you together to complete this difficult task and build this STEM education ecosystem together.

 

After all, the road to promote STEM education is not easy, and it is even more difficult under the Asian style education system. Now our efforts are starting to be seen, and the most important thing is to rely on the support of parents and educators. STEM in Asia! Let us create together possibilities for new education method and new parent-child bonding time activities!