Resources from STEM Smart Workshops
The Successful STEM Resource Library includes programs and projects featured at STEM Smart workshops, as well as briefs based on research and recommendations from the National Research Council reports, Successful K-12 STEM Education and Monitoring Progress Toward Successful K-12 STEM Education.
PEEP features a chicken, named Peep, a robin (Chirp), and an irascible, endearing duck (Quack), as well as an extended family of friends and (occasional) foes. The show takes place in and around a large urban park—a place of great wonder and mystery, and a place Peep, Quack, and Chirp are forever eager to explore. Airing in both English (on public television) and Spanish (on VMe), each televised half-hour contains two animated stories that highlight specific science or math concepts and two live-action films that show real kids playing and experimenting with those concepts. These segments not only give kids great ideas—like building towers out of shapes or making parachutes for toys—but also show the adults in their lives that play, science, and math are complementary activities that can be done anywhere, anytime…in the kitchen, in the bathtub, on the porch, and in the backyard.
We present a new approach to teaching core biology concepts (inheritance and evolution) involving engaging engineering design challenges that students solve using a combination of inexpensive hands-on materials, basic mathematics, and simple simulations.
The NSF-sponsored Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems Engineering Research Center (BMES ERC) at the University of Southern California (USC) has developed an extensive K–12 outreach program. The Center’s various outreach initiatives have brought the excitement of scientific discovery to hundreds of elementary and secondary school students as well as to their teachers and extended family members. Leveraging the substantial resources and human capital of the BMES ERC, educational curricula that are experiential, hands-on, and aligned with California State Science Standards have been developed and implemented directly into K–12 classrooms. Lesson plans are rich in activities that demonstrate the scientific process, thus ensuring that students learn science by doing science. BMES research is used as a focal and reference point so that K–12 science is contextualized, helping to address the perennial question, “Why do I need to know this?
Broadening Advanced Technological Education Connections (BATEC) is the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education National Center for Computing and Information Technologies. BATEC’s efforts in curriculum, outreach, and research reflect the demands of the 21st century workplace.
Broadening Advanced Technological Education Connections (BATEC) is the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education (NSF ATE) National Center for Computing and Information Technologies. BATEC’s efforts in curriculum, outreach, and research reflect the demands of the 21st century workplace.
With systematic structure, organized tools, proper resources, and hands-on real-world experiences, engineering-based learning (EBL) can be an effective teaching and learning model for high school STEM courses. EBL combines well-known tools from science and engineering to create a pedagogical process to enhance student-centered learning across multiple STEM disciplines. Unlike project-based learning (PBL), EBL is a systematic method for students and teachers to find an appropriate solution to a given open-ended real-world problem. EBL bridges the gap between STEM abstract concepts and real-life applications. Thus, EBL has the potential to motivate students to pursue college STEM degrees and join the STEM workforce.
The Southwest Career and Technical Academy (CTA), an Apple Distinguished School, is a Clark County School District (CCSD) public magnet school in its fourth year of operation that has 1,400 students enrolled in 11 different career and technical education (CTE) program areas. The school is divided into two smaller personalized learning communities—the Design Academy and the Professional Service Academy. Within the Design Academy, the Southwest CTA offers the following areas of specialization: Entertainment Engineering, Fashion Design, Video Game Design, and Web Design. In the Professional Services Academy, the areas of focus are Culinary Arts, Hospitality, Travel and Tourism, Automotive Technology, Respiratory Therapy, Dental Assisting, and a Certified Nursing Assistant Program. Within the smaller learning communities, students who have common career interests share English, math, science, social studies, electives, and program classes.
More than 60 percent of all students entering higher education in the United States are required to complete remedial or developmental courses as a first step towards earning associate’s or bachelor’s degrees. A staggering 70 percent of these students never complete the required mathematics courses, blocking their advancement in higher education and entry into a wide array of technical and occupational careers. Recognizing the grave consequences around these alarming statistics, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching engaged with a network of faculty members, researchers, and designers to create and put into the field two new mathematics Pathways: Statway and Quantway.
CIRCL brings together the research of more than 200 separately funded research projects in the National Science Foundation theme of “cyberlearning.” New technologies change what and how people learn. Informed by learning science, cyberlearning is the use of new technology to create effective new learning experiences that were never possible or practical before.
DSST’s (Denver School for Science and Technology) Stapleton High is the founding school in a network of public charter schools. DSST Public Schools currently operates five STEM open-enrollment charter schools, four middle schools, and two high schools, serving almost 2,000 students in Denver, Colorado.
