The Arabian Pearl Gulf School (APG) is a private PK12 school in Bahrain. The following case study was written by John Labor, IB Coordinator at APG School.

At APG our mission is to make quality international education easily accessible for its students to aspire to be competent, independent and curious global citizens. I work as an IB coordinator at APG. The leadership team and I have made this a priority to implement STEAM in all subjects across grade levels to upskill our students and staff and treat technology as an inevitable and necessary tool for preparing young learners for the future. We believe that if we genuinely care for our learners, we should make them future-ready.

Having established these goals, the biggest challenge we faced was training our staff to implement an interactive STEAM curriculum into the traditional education system. This is where Digital Media Academy (DMA) completely revolutionized our approach. The team at DMA conducted training sessions with each individual department at APG to identify the specific challenges of STEAM integration with their specific subject areas and developed strategies to overcome these challenges. The APG Core Team supported the successful integration of the DMA Learning Platform across the whole school. This helped build confidence in teachers to start integrating STEAM in their regular curriculum. Digital Media Academy’s ability to provide 24/7 training and technical support when needed has established an incredible partnership between us.

Our students have shown increased independence and creativity as they explore this new online platform. Their ability to communicate directly with teachers in DMA’s online platform when they need help has increased their online communication skills exponentially. Students at APG are developing their critical thinking skills and becoming less dependent on their teachers for information. DMA’s online platform presents unique challenges to kids to stimulate their interest in STEAM.

Educators are now using Digital Media Academy lessons in more than 700 different classes from Kindergarten through Grade 12 at Arabian Pearl Gulf School. Teachers are much more comfortable using and teaching technology to their students. We look forward to the continued benefits of our partnership with Digital Media Academy as they’ve been a great partner benefiting our entire school community.