SERC was selected by the Australian Government Department of Education to run the Early Learning STEM Australia (ELSA) Pilot in 2018.
More than 880 preschool services from across Australia applied via an expression of interest (EOI) process to take part in ELSA. From this list, 100 centres were chosen to participate in the 2018 ELSA Pilot.
For the 2018 ELSA Pilot, SERC designed and developed 6 apps for tablets and smartphones, including 4 children’s apps, an app for educators and an app for families. SERC also created a revolutionary off-app program to compliment the apps. This program encourages children to engage with play-based activities in their centre and outside in the natural environment before and after using the apps.
The first ELSA Pilot was such a great success that in late 2018, the Department contracted SERC to run another pilot in 2019.
In 2020, SERC was funded to run ELSA as a research project to establish it’s impact on children’s STEM learning and spatial reasoning.
Then, in 2021, the ELSA program was made available to all preschools and Foundation Year classes around Australia on a commercial basis for the first time.
Visit the ELSA website to find out more.