SAM Labs shoots for global STEAM education with help from NetSuite
Kickstarter success story to help teachers around the world tackle STEAM skills gap with innovative play-based learning kits
LONDON, July 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- SAM Labs, an award winning EdTech company, has chosen Oracle NetSuite to support its rapid growth as it helps address the increasing global demand for science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics (STEAM) skills. With NetSuite, SAM Labs is able to focus on its goals of getting young students excited about technology while easing the mounting pressure on time-strapped teachers by streamlining and scaling its critical business processes.
In the UK alone, a shortfall in STEAM-educated graduates is making it difficult for employers to fill in-demand positions, which is costing the country an estimated £63 billion per year in lost GDP1. Moreover, exhausted teachers are struggling to adapt their lesson plans quickly enough, with 93 percent saying their workload is too heavy2. To help address this challenge, SAM Labs conducted a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014 to fund new IoT-connected learning kits that allow teachers to present STEAM lessons in a highly interactive and engaging environment. To keep up with the demand for its innovative play-based learning kits and scale its business internationally, SAM Labs selected NetSuite.
"The STEAM skills gap isn't a localised issue, it's a global problem," said Joachim Horn, Founder of SAM Labs. "Teachers need more time and resources to adapt their STEAM lesson plans and with our play-based learning kits, we empower teachers to help students aged between seven and eleven years to learn the fundamentals of coding and computer-based problem solving in a fun and engaging way. This approach has proved very successful and to keep up with the growing demand, we selected NetSuite."
NetSuite has enabled SAM Labs to unify its teams, improve the flow of information between departments and accommodate growing demand for its products from across global markets. As a result, SAM Labs is able to scale its business by eliminating the complexity of its previous business processes and systems and bring its revolutionary teaching resources to more schools, teachers, and most importantly, young students. SAM Labs is now being used in classrooms in more than 20 countries including the United Kingdom, United States, China, Australia and Brazil.
"It's a privilege to work with a company that's making such huge strides in the education sector, not just in the UK but around the world," said Nicky Tozer, VP, EMEA at Oracle NetSuite. "SAM Labs has come a long way since raising its first $160,000 on Kickstarter, and with our platform, the SAM Labs team have set themselves up to make an even bigger dent in the global STEAM skills gap."
About SAM Labs
SAM Labs provides everything you need to deliver the most engaging STEAM learning experience to your classroom. It seamlessly connects software and hardware with lesson plans that cover a wide variety of subjects, making learning about coding accessible, experimental, interactive and fun.
SAM Labs kits are bursting with wireless electronic blocks that each have a personality of their own. From lights to motors to sliders to buzzers, every Bluetooth-enabled block can connect to the others via the app to do something different. Press a button to turn a light on! Use a light sensor to activate an alarm! With the app, students can code the behaviours of blocks in any way they can imagine, enabling them to make anything from simple reactions to complex creations in minutes.
Students can use SAM Labs to design, write and debug programs, applying sequencing, selection and iteration. They will use logical reasoning to write algorithms, incorporating variables, inputs and outputs. Using the blocks and app, they will learn to control and simulate physical systems. Learn more at http://samlabs.com.
About Oracle NetSuite
For more than 20 years, Oracle NetSuite has helped organisations grow, scale and adapt to change. NetSuite provides a suite of cloud-based applications, which includes financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR, professional services automation and omnichannel commerce, used by more than 40,000 organisations and subsidiaries in 199 countries and territories.
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1 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee: Digital skills crisis: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmsctech/270/270.pdf
2 Teachers' Working Time Survey: https://www.teachers.org.uk/news-events/press-releases-england/teachers%E2%80%99-working-time-survey
SOURCE Oracle NetSuite
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