Why STEAM (STEM) is so important….Jessica CastanedaSpark Innovations

Science and Technology

• Science and Technology have, over the last 50 years, become a major part of society and our individual lives. It has single-handedly changed the way we live and has opened up new possibilities for our future as a race that previously deemed impossible.

• What ways has technology changed in the last 10 years?

Science and Technology KEEP CHANGING

• Internet shopping

• Banking on-line

• On-line websites (web responsive for different gadgets)

• Mobile phones- who still has a landline?

• Media- Netflix, Hulu, etc.

• Social Networking

• Vehicles- hybrids, electric, self-driving

How does STEM fit into this?

• STEAM education is set up to teach students how to thinking critically, enabling them to problem solve effectively and use creative thinking to drive forward and complete projects using new methods, tried and tested solutions and using their own initiatives.

Critical Thinking

• “Critical thinking is a major part of society today that is regularly overlooked, especially in schools and colleges. Everyday society is facing new problems and obstacles that stand in the way of progress and it's so important that the young people of today are developing critical thinking skills that will allow them to tackle these problems head on in an efficient and progressive manner”.

Ed Ballard- PhD in engineering

Importance of Critical Thinking

• Students are being introduced to the STEAM way of learning allowing them to grow and develop these essential skills at a much faster rate.

• As well as learning about the facts on the subject they are learning about, they are also taught to openly ask questions, how to experiment with new ideas and how to channel their creativity into something productive.

STEAM from STEM- Add the Arts!

• STEAM in the past was known as STEM and with the inclusion of the Arts part of the program, governments and learning institutions are hoping that this will be enough to entice new students into becoming part of the program. Younger children love to be engaged in learning, especially through interactive projects that they can really get involved and be hands on with.

Why add in the Arts?

• The inclusion of the arts component into STEM makes it more fun to learn, and more approachable to kids. A child who has never seen code or computer science learning will be less intimidated and more engaged if it includes something they are familiar with, like an art component, whether that is learning it on an interface that uses a creative component to teach it, or whether they are learning computer science by actually creating something

Why add in the Arts?

• Art education allows students to learn things in a more open ended way and make them applicable to real life. Arts and creativity are crucial to the sciences, technology and computer science. They are the tool that allows technology to be usable in real life!

Why add in the Arts?

• Arts are used in website and user interfaces design, advertising, product design and usability, branding and start-up creation among countless other uses, all things that are crucial to STEAM learning and careers.

How do you actually incorporate STEAM instruction into your classroom?

John Dewey believed in the desegregation of subjects and in allowing children to just ask and seek answers with their unbridled natural curiosity.As many teachers witness in secondary school, students

largely believe that asking questions indicates a lack of understanding, not curiosity. This sequestration of knowledge into categories that don’t connect is ultimately detrimental to our students because in the real world, all of it blends together. The scientist who can use science and math to create a new treatment for disease must also incorporate design-thinking to imagine and visualize her work. She must also express herself with impressive communication skills in order to secure funding and support. She must work collaboratively with her colleagues and investors to improve and expand ideas, and then publicly speak about her progress and discoveries with eloquence and ease. This multi-skilled individual is a representation of a student who understands how academic subjects are meant to be a genuine symphony and not a collection of discordant solos.

We want to do the following with STEAM instruction and all instruction.

• Ask questions

• Connect the dots

• Problem solve

• Think creatively

• Be innovative

GOOD STEAM instruction does the following

• STEM lessons focus on real-world issues and problems. Connect learning with something the students are familiar with or can see the real world application.

• STEM lessons are guided by the engineering design process

• STEM lessons immerse students in hands-on inquiry and open-ended exploration.

• STEM lessons involve students in productive teamwork.

• TEM lessons apply rigorous math, art, science content your students are learning.

• STEM lessons allow for multiple right answers and reframe failure as a necessary part of learning.

• Add to your resource list. Build your own library of age-appropriate materials such as online news sites, magazines and journals. Look for resources that demonstrate real-world implications of student lessons. Iowamep.org

• Dry humor and fiction. Science isn't always dry non-fiction. Look for resources that are interesting and engaging and tell stories.

• Ask questions first and then read. To help students get a better understanding of key concepts, have them skim an article and form questions based on the titles, subheadings and photos they see. Have them try to answer the questions on their own before they start reading.

Most teachers agree that better literacy skills lead to better STEAM learning. But putting concrete skill-building tasks into practice can be difficult. Speaking, listening, and communicating are important.

The chief components of literacy are reading, writing, language, speaking, and listening. As educators, we need to be thinking about what students are reading, writing, and talking about.

Today, literate students are not just good readers; they construct meaning from text, think critically about the real world around them, and effectively communicate their ideas.

When lessons emphasize reading, give students a purpose to guide their reading. Ask students what was interesting versus important, have them summarize main ideas, or agree/disagree with statements before and again after the reading. As students develop their literacy skills, self-monitoring for understanding emerges.

Project Based Learning• Students work on a project over an extended

period of time – from a week up to a semester – that engages them in solving a real-world problem or answering a complex question. They demonstrate their knowledge and skills by developing a public product or presentation for a real audience.

• As a result, students develop deep content knowledge as well as critical thinking, creativity, and communication skills in the context of doing an authentic, meaningful project. Project Based Learning unleashes a contagious, creative energy among students and teachers.

Project Based Learning

Lets put it to practice

Why a tiny house?

Can a tiny house actually help the environment?

Scientists in France have fabricated a single-story home that measures only 20 microns (millionths of a meter) across. That’s about one-fifth the width of a human hair, or roughly 500,000 times smaller than a human-scaled two-story house.

TINY, TINY House!

• The minuscule house features a tiled roof, seven windows, a door and a teensy chimney. It was created at the Femto-ST Institute in Besançon by a robot controlling a tightly focused beam of charged particles known as ions.

• The micro-dwelling was built inside a vacuum chamber to demonstrate the dexterity and precision of the team's robotic system. But the project was more than just a chance to show off. The scientists say the capability to create such intricate nanostructures could one day transform industries ranging from aerospace to medicine.

TINY, TINY House!

• “In the future, we want to develop this type of nanofactory in order to be able to reduce the size of a lot of objects that we use today,” Jean-Yves Rauch, an engineer at the institute and co-author of a new paper about the feat published recently in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A, told NBC News MACH in an email.

• The robot started with a layer of silica, the main component of sand, and used the ion beam to shape the walls and cut out the windows and door. To assemble the walls, the robot used the beam to score the silica without cutting all the way through, Rauch said, and then the structure was folded into place like origami.

TINY, TINY House!

• Mark Swihart, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Buffalo who wasn't involved in the effort, called the demonstration “quite impressive,” adding that the fabrication method used to build the house pushes existing technology “in a new way to enable creation of microstructures that could not be realized before.”

• Rauch said he and his colleagues will attempt to fabricate even smaller structures, and eventually hope to create minute biosensors on the tips of optical fibers that could measure temperature and other conditions in difficult-to-access places and could even perform more complex tasks such as detecting viruses in blood vessels.

• “We are not working in a new field of research," Rauch said, "but we are constantly seeking to push the limits of assembly precision and measurement precision."

Scream Machines

HydraulicsAfter students learned about the hydraulic launching system in the roller coaster it was time to expand their understanding of fluid mechanics and teach them that it is a branch of science and engineering that literally gives kids a lift!

Students got to:

• Explore the wide world of hydraulics, researched its beginnings and modern applications (hydraulic bike brakes for one).

• Develop their own hydraulic brake systems and test them

• Practice with pistons,

• Form hypotheses why hydraulics use oil instead of water

• Learn about that rascal Pascal and his exploding barrels

• Build simple machines that ran on fluids.

• Incorporated sounds they related to hydraulics in onomatopoeia poetry

• Once they finished their simple machines students got the chance to build Judo Bots and evaluate materials based upon density, rigidity, and mass. Using the JudoBots in battle gave students hands-on knowledge of how to utilize hydraulics to effectively apply leverage to manipulate a mass (walking away with a new appreciation of applied engineering and the power of fluids!)

• And more…

Guess Who, Gumshoe?Students hugely enjoyed becoming “Probationary Gumshoes” as they got to:

• Measure spatter and calculate velocities and trajectories• Work together to identify and locate the different countries, identify WHO did it,

WHAT they did, WHERE they were located, WHEN it happened and mark the appropriate places where forensics took place all over the globe.

• Practice noticing details and forming hypotheses during “Who Did It?” exercises. • Create casts of footprints, • Learned about impression evidence• Take molds of teeth• Create classification systems,• Practice separating ink into its components with chromatography• Record measurements observations and data, and developed the perfect recipe for

faux blood. • Compare and classifying prints, creating a database, and determining the best

method to sort fingerprints into categories• A highlight was when we have been able to bring in local detectives to instruct

students on how the skills and techniques they learned and practiced during the activities are applied in the real world.

• And more….

Click!

During the Click! unit students will learned the history of cameras, a lot about light, poked pinholes to make living pictures, built an actual working camera, deconstructed an actual working camera [and did their best to put it back together], learned about the ethics of reverse engineering, found out why a picture is worth a thousand words, learned what horses have to do with the history of motion pictures, and much more.

Sweet!Chocolate. There are few foods that people feel as passionate about -- a passion that goes beyond a love for the "sweetness" of most candies or desserts. Where the mere word can cause mouths to water. But where did the human hunger for sweet begin? And why do we seem to associate candy with medicine-like powers? In this sweet lesson students get hands on (and hands in!) while creating home-made truffles, discovering the history of conversation, or rather conversation hearts, practice origami giving, and learn a little about Hansel and Gretel as they, much like the ill-fated siblings, follow a trail of crumbs (in the form of written clues) to progress through the forest! It’s a scrumdidlyumptious time for all!

Protecting the Harvest

Welcome to the Harvest! In this fun lesson students made scarecrows come to life by designing and building animatronic hands that really moved and could pick up objects, created incredible 3D hand art that jumped off the page, read legends and mapped out locations of scarecrows of all kinds around the world, created a timeline of ancient scarecrow history, and got a scarecrow eye view of nature by crafting haiku poems.

Bright IdeasThere are a lot of things we don’t know that we don’t know, so how do we come to know what it is we’ve never known? All it takes is a problem and a question.

A whisper of an idea sparked by a simple question, even one like, “What else could I do with this?” and then we’re off, with bright eyes and bright ideas! To teach creativity we have to invoke curiosity and teach the ability to ask good questions. That’s the start and the heart of this lesson where students get to practice their own ingenious ingenuity by solving problems; figuring out how to fly a funky little paper airplane on a tsunami of air; creating wild, wacky, and wondrous inventions; discovering how bikes are turned into blenders and soda bottles into bulbs; finding out that they’re a target, learning the power of a tiny touch of yellow, ad-ing things up, and much much more!

Heart & Soles

Although the human foot has remained unchanged for thousands of years, what people have worn on their feet shows incredible diversity and an endless variety of forms and functions.

Regardless, a child's delight in a new pair of shoes is the same all over the world, whether the shoes are patent-leather sandals, straw alpargatas, deerskin moccasins, or wooden clogs. And when they get to design and build a brand new style all their own? That’s a whole new level of fun!

In this lesson students get to debate form vs. function, track shoes throughout time, find out what’s in a sole, walk like a Venetian (and rise high!), become shoe designers, cobble together something amazing, and much much more.

Heart & Soles

Heart & Soles

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Free UnitsWe have over 120 free units with many that incorporate STEAM instruction and projects throughout. You can find them at www.sparkedinnovations.net