By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News

The STEAM program, which stands for science, technology, engineering, art and math, continues to gain popularity at local schools, and District 429 is in the process of adding several related activities for students.

Superintendent Brian Dukes said some of the programs include a weather station and one that helps track student’s health:

“Another thing we’re in the process of trialing is our heart rate monitoring for our PE classes. We really felt like there needed to be some technology upgrades in that area and it’s just really exciting that we have one teacher over at our junior high testing the classroom set and basically, it projects where the kid’s  heart rate and talks about their step count. Then it gives the parent and student a day-to-day feedback of how the kid did in PE that day and did they stay in the range of where they needed to be at for a heart rate stand point and, really, just being able to evaluate were they engaged in that lesson and the activity we were doing?” Dukes said.

Dukes was a guest on a recent community forum where he covers more new classes. That can be found at WJEZ.com.