CORRECTION: This story was updated at 5:52 p.m. on Monday, May 20, 2019 to correct the name of Signal Mountain Middle High School. A previous version of the story erroneously referred to it as Signal Mountain Middle School.

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A Chattanooga company that developed unique online training programs to help students see the relevance of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills in the real world has awarded a 3D printer to Signal Mountain Middle High School.

The seventh-grade STEM Innovators class taught by Joshua Payne won the prize after the school became the first in Hamilton County to complete more than 5,000 of Learning Blade's online courses. Nationwide, the Learning Blade courses are offered in more than 2,000 schools. Even though more than 2.4 million lessons have been delivered over the past five years, only about 50 schools have reached the 5,000-course milestone to win the 3D printing prize.

"It's a great curriculum and we're very happy to get this printer," Payne said after his class was presented a 3D printer earlier this month. "It really supplements all the things we do in the classroom to help expose our studetns to different ways STEM is used in industry. The kids really enjoy it because they can work at their own pace and what they are most interested in."

Payne, a football coach who taught the seventh-grade STEM innovators class at Signal Mountain Middle High School in the past year, has used the Learning Blade curriculum for the past four years.

Learning Blade was created by the Chattanooga-based Thinking Media owned by the engineering-turned-entrepreneurial couple Sheila and Dr. Dane Boyington. After selling their first curriculum venture called KeyTrain, the Boyingtons began developing Learning Blade five years ago as on online curriculum to show students how STEM careers use the academics they are learning in school. Career videos, parent activities and 3D printing lessons are among the extra tools that Learning Blade offers which were used in Payne's classroom over the past year.

"Kids ask all the time, "When will I ever use or need this?' said Joshua Sneideman, a former Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the Department of Energy who is a vice president and head of teacher training at Learning Blade. "These give those students an answer and show how these subjects are important in real life careers and situations.

Sheila Boyington said Learning Blade's program aims to be a resource not just for one or two subjects, but to reach the entire staff at a school, offering lessons in not only science and math but also social studies and English.

"The online courses really help contextualize the subjects being studied to show the relevance of what students are learning," she said.

Among students who have gone through Learning Blade programs, twice as many said they want to be engineers or scientists. The number who said they want to pursue computer science careers after going through Learning Blade courses is up by 55 percent, according to Battelle research on the programs.

The program is targeted at middle school students because that is when 94 percent of students say they get interested in and begin to pick their career path and guide their high school course selections.

In Tennessee, Tennessee STEM Innovation Network has supplied Learning Blade to schools for the past four years.

Thinking Media has also created coding courses and training for the Boy Scouts' NOVA award, which the company completed in January.

"Coding formats can sometimes be a bit complicated for the average den mother or scout leader so we developed materials to help the Boy Scouts," Boyington said.

In school classrooms, Thinking Media offers training for teachers and easy-to-use software that allows students to proceed at their own pace with programs they can select.

"It's a great resource for teachers who may not have a STEM background or much experience in these disciplines to still really help their students understand what STEM careers are out there and how these skills are used in everyday life," Boyington said.

Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340.