WaterWays wins “Trailblazer: Early Learning (Pre-K to 6)” in the Educators Pick Best of STEM 2024 Awards

Killer Snails is proud to announce that WaterWays has been awarded the “Trailblazer: Early Learning (Pre-K to 6)” in the Educators Pick Best of STEM 2024 Awards! This award celebrates products that push the boundaries of technology for teaching and learning, highlighting Killer Snails’ commitment to innovative and impactful science education for young learners. 

The Educators Pick Best of STEM 2024 Awards is judged exclusively by STEM educators to spotlight innovative technologies that meaningfully engage students in the classroom.  

WaterWays is an immersive environmental science curriculum supplement for grades 3-5 created with support from the National Institutes of Health and in collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Hudson River Park, and the Mount Sinai Transdisciplinary Center on Early Environmental Exposures. In this research-backed five class period program, students explore interconnected issues such as plastic pollution, air and water quality, and marine biodiversity using personalized websites and augmented reality or web-based extended reality technologies on computers or tablets. 

Aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards and the Connections to Excellence in Environmental Education, activities in WaterWays encourage students to embark on a journey of scientific inquiry, collecting and analyzing data, and constructing hypotheses to tackle real world problems. As a fifth grade teacher in Virginia said “Students really enjoyed the simulations…they said that really helped them understand what was happening in the environment and what would make a difference and what wouldn’t.”

Since WaterWays’ launch in June 2023, it has reached over 60,000 students across the country after two years of development research with more than 900 students and 40 teachers.