Documents in this report are in the repository:-http://repository.erasmusplus.website/RETROSTEM/final/-Username: evaluator-Password: Evaluator101!CONTEXTThe facts surrounding young people and the importance of STEM knowledge and skills have not dissipated during RETROSTEM's life. If anything, STEM is more important, and its role has intensified during this period. The importance of STEM would likely have grown anyway, but the onset of COVID in 2020 has acted as a catalyst. The impracticality of gatherings has led to a rapid digitisation, meaning that coding, electronics, and other STEM skills that RETROSTEM aims to promote are likely to be more in demand than ever. OBJECTIVESRETROSTEM’s main objective, which the consortium believe we have fulfilled, was to produce approaches and tools to help teachers and others working with children to engage their interest in programming and STEM-related skills. It aimed to do this not by increasing screen time but by encouraging hands-on play through the creation of games playable on a retro design console in combination with electronics gadgets relating to STEM subjects.PARTICIPANTSThe RETROSTEM partners, unchanged since the project’s outset, include three schools, a university engineering department, a company offering bespoke software development services to governmental agencies, and a company specialising in corporate training solutions and knowledge dissemination.ACTIVITIESRETROSTEM achieved its aims through activities two intellectual outputs (IOs). IO1 consisted of activities necessary to produce a console and documents to support its use:•Created the Console Guide to help users build, configure, and use the console in the classroom•Developed a curriculum and unit plans for use with the console, based on Raspberry Pi edition, to teach children programming. This includes lessons such as using Minecraft Pi games, played on the console, with electronics (e.g. circuits with lights, buzzers, buttons alongside the game) that children build and that enhance understanding of STEM conceptsIO2 was the next stage, covering supplementary resources:•Designed electronics kits that support the curriculum, to be built by children for use with the console as an educational hands-on play approach•Prepared an online social learning environment to deliver the curriculum to teachers or other users and for skills retention•Piloted the outcomes with teachers and delivered a final version•Created a dedicated virtual space (the RETROSTEM Academy) to support users and grow a community of adopters, practitioners, and other interested partiesRESULTS AND IMPACTThe RETROSTEM Project produced the proposed results: - RETROSTEM Raspberry Pi Consoles running Minecraft Pi - RETROSTEM Curriculum - Learning Motivation Environment in all project languages with a skills recognition framework - DIY kits to enhance teaching experience - RETROSTEM Academy virtual space with supporting infrastructure Their impact is best quantified through project dissemination as well as multiplier and pilot events, with details in the project dissemination report available in the document repository (http://repository.erasmusplus.website/RETROSTEM/final/). In brief, the project used newsletters, infographics, press releases, and social media to reach an estimated 64000 people in the project’s life. Pilot and multiplier events were also impactful for the project, allowing deliverables to be tested and promoted in, as well as boosting key dissemination opportunities with, the target audience and beyond. TARGET GROUPSRETROSTEM’s target groups remain those proposed at the project’s inception. The main target group is professionals (teachers, social workers) working with children of 8 – 17 years. Otherwise, beneficiaries such as schools, children/parents’ associations and organisations, policymakers and educational stakeholders deciding curricula, parents, and children’s curriculum developers comprise more indirect target groups. After the end of the project, target groups could expand to include commercial organisations producing serious games for educational purposes, universities with pedagogical or engineering departments, educational bodies, and STEM toy manufacturers.LONG TERM BENEFITSThere are several long-term benefits from RETROSTEM: - Elucidation of findings on ways to introduce children to programming and STEM through hands-on play. - Creation of evidence-based policy and research recommendations for the use of games to teach coding and to promote educational hands-on play, especially for STEM-related subjects - Setting the project up as a node of knowledge on how to engage children with programming and STEM - Devising strategies for the adoption of educational hands-on play in the classroom - Providing a pool of expertise and technical assistance to start-up awareness nodes (new nodes could be ‘adopted’ by a more experienced node, such as Code Dojo).