Three things we do
Activities for students, grades 1–12. A class spends a session designing, measuring and rebuilding something real — a DNA investigation, a bridge that has to hold, a smart-home model with micro:bit. At the centre, at the school, or online.
Professional development for teachers. Accredited in-service programmes for teachers at every level, from pre-primary to upper secondary, taught by university specialists. The subject matter comes with the didactics: how to turn a topic into something a class actually does.
Free tools for schools. Fourteen browser-based learning games, a library of long-term lesson plans that follow the Lithuanian national curriculum, and a school management system. No licence fees, no advertising, no student accounts.
„STEAM Nuotykiai“ — the learning-game platform
Fourteen games covering mathematics, natural sciences, informatics, engineering and media. A teacher gives the class a code; a student types it in and plays. Nothing is installed, no personal data is required beyond a nickname, and progress is reported against the achievement levels of the national curriculum rather than points or stars — so the teacher sees what was understood, not who clicked fastest.
The games are in Lithuanian, because they are written for Lithuanian classrooms and curriculum. Browse the games (in Lithuanian) →
Why a university runs this
STEAM is easy to turn into a show: a robot, a rocket, a photograph of children smiling. It is much harder to make it work as learning for the student who does not already find science easy. That is the centre's actual subject — didactics — and it is why the games measure understanding, why every activity has a learning goal, and why the lesson plans map onto the national curriculum rather than onto a theme.
At a glance
- Organisation
- VMU STEAM Didactics Centre, a unit of Vytautas Magnus University (VMU), Lithuania.
- Location
- Universiteto g. 10, Akademija, Kaunas district, LT-53361, Lithuania.
- Audience
- School students in grades 1–12, their teachers, and schools across Lithuania.
- Platform
- Thirteen educational games, free for educational institutions, running in any browser.
- Languages
- Activities and games in Lithuanian; correspondence and visits in English.
- Contact
- steam@vdu.lt
Working with us from abroad
We host international visitors, partners and researchers who want to see how a university-run STEAM centre works in practice: how activities are designed, how the games are built and tested with classes, and what schools do with the data afterwards. Write to steam@vdu.lt and tell us what you would like to see — a visit, a joint project, or simply a conversation.