"A fully STEAMed European Chain Reaction"
is a science/art project within our main project.
All the schools in the project have created and filmed a chain reaction,
and we have put them all together to make one long chain across Europe.

Why make a chain reaction?

In this part of our project the students at the seven participating schools are challenged to build the best rube-goldberg-machine. In this arty STEM-project children's CREATIVITY is put to the test. Problems that WILL arise have to be tackled in the best possible way. Children have to think in steps: What is the problem? / How can we fix it? / We execute! / We evaluate! ... and we start this process over and over again until things work as originally planned. Children are obliged to COOPERATE within school because the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. 

In this project we achieved a lot of goals in a very short period of time! Of course there are the goals in science. Almost every goal in the science curriculum is integrated into this project! Besides the obvious science goals children learn a LOT about social skills. Children have to learn how to COMMUNICATE with each other in a crisis situation (when things don't work and the deadline is approaching.)

Our main goal of the project is too make children enthusiastic about technology. Each school creates a Rube Goldberg machine. The outcome of the project is a fully STEAMed European Chain Reaction - all the chains combined into one big chain reaction.

Thanks to Dave Schrauwen in the award winning eTwinning project "The European Chain Reaction" for his inspiration to make a long chain reaction and letting me use his description of it as a basis for the text on this page.