DUNEDIN, Fla. — Pinellas County Schools is taking a unique approach to learning, moving beyond the classroom walls and onto the wheels of a school bus turned mobile science lab.
“Honestly, I like the fact that we can be outside, and we can do more than just like sitting, and we can do more experiments,” said Danaiah, a 7th grader at Dunedin Highland Middle School.
School leaders said the Innovation Lab is traveling to every middle school in the district this year and giving all 7th-grade students the on-campus experience.
On Thursday, it stopped at Dunedin Highland Middle.
“Yesterday, one of the students did not want to leave,” said Stephanie Hornick, the Middle School Science Specialist at Pinellas County Schools. “They just didn’t want to get off the bus.”
Kids can explore things like robotics, physics, and engineering through interactive stations.
The district said the bus’s transformation into a high-tech learning space included collaboration from 11 district departments.
“This was built specifically for our 7th-grade students, so we took a former school bus, completely gutted it out, reformed it into a mobile lab,” Hornick said. “It was totally internal. We had cabinetry, electricians. Everybody was from within the county, and we worked together to have it on the road by June for some of our summer camps.”
The mobile lab has also led to greater conversations back in the classroom and beyond.
“When we’re getting into some of the content within the classroom, then they’re bringing it back, 'well I remember doing this thing on the bus,' or, 'I remember doing this thing on the bus,” said Hornick. “With that too, they’re starting to talk about careers, which to talk about a science-based career in middle school is such a huge thing for students.”
Some students shared how new environments make for great learning opportunities.
“Instead of just sitting in a classroom, taking notes, and writing down in your journal, but actually like using hands-on activities to actually learn something new every single day,” said Zaniyah, a 7th grade student at Dunedin Highland Middle.
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