STEM+ [Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics] +PLUS+

A new study explores a strange paradox: In countries that empower women, they are less likely to choose math and science professions.

Check out a variety of ways schools might use drones as a teaching tool.

This two-week MOOC covers key concepts related to small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS), including basic types, capabilities, and current and future uses. Particular emphasis is placed on safety of flight within the National Airspace System (NAS), including where to fly and where to find flight planning tools. The MOOC also introduces the Federal Aviation Regulations that cover commercial operations of sUAS (known as FAR Part 107), providing participants with the knowledge and resources to pursue further training, should they wish to become commercial UAS pilots.

Each year, new students in the Academy of Aerospace and Engineering go through an adjustment phase as they learn our STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) curriculum and our method of exploratory learning. Almost gone are scripted activities, and instead students are tasked to develop their own experiments, research topics of their own choosing, and build objects of their own design. While many students find this academic freedom exciting, many also find it disconcerting and even frightening–they might fail! They often have never failed at anything in school. They have always followed directions and gotten straight A’s. Now they feel threatened by the uncertainty of choosing their own path in learning and discovery.

The Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) has launched a national initiative designed to help close the gender gap in STEM education and employment over the next eight years. The organization aims to raise $70 million put 2.5 million girls through their STEM programs by 2025.

The initiative is just the latest measure from the organization designed to address gender equity in STEM fields. GSUSA launched 23 STEM and outdoor badges earlier this year and plans to add 18 cybersecurity badges and a series of space science badges over the next two years.

"Girl Scouts are almost twice as likely as non–Girl Scouts to participate in STEM activities (60 percent versus 35 percent)," according to information released by the organizations, "and 77 percent of girls say that because of Girl Scouts, they are considering a career in technology."

From biotech to climate change, advances in technology raise significant moral questions. To engage responsibly, our next generation of scientists need training in the arts and ethics.

In 1959, the British physicist and novelist C.P. Snow delivered a famously controversial lecture at Cambridge University. He described a post-war schism between two groups — scientists and the literary world.

Snow identified this as a newly emergent divide, across which each party was more than happy to sneer at the other: Scientists proudly unable to quote a phrase of Shakespeare, and literary types untroubled by the second law of thermodynamics.

Australian schools are now wrestling with a new digital technologies curriculum. In this new subject, every student in Australia will learn the fundamentals of computer science, data science and coding.

This curriculum change is long overdue. Australian students ranked last in tech skills and interest in technical jobs according to a 2016 report produced for the World Economic Forum, across a global sample of countries.

The lack of capability in STEM is evident in the downward trend of PISA scores in science and mathematics, identified in the recently published Australia 2030: Prosperity Through Innovation Plan.

The digital technologies subject adds new content to the compulsory curriculum for all students from the start of schooling through to year eight. Although the curriculum provides a framework for challenging and engaging STEM activities, a curriculum alone is not enough to ensure students build these capabilities.

Some of Australia’s future astronauts could be among a group of 80 girls attending NASA’s “space school”.

It is the first time that WA students have joined the trip to the US organised by the Alliance of Girls’ Schools Australasia.

More than 200 students from 35 girls’ schools are taking part in the two-week program.

Highlights include working on simulated missions to repair the International Space Station, landing a rover on Mars, designing a Mars habitat, experiencing training in limited gravity, learning about robotics and touring the US space agency’s facilities in Houston, Texas.

Many teachers and students on our middle school campus rely on free resources from Scratch.mit.edu, a site developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, to introduce students to coding and engage them in creative projects. Some of our teachers include Scratch in their annual Hour of Code offerings; two teachers offer Scratch coding as part of their Design Lab classes; students in my English classes further their study of narrative by designing and coding Scratch games; another teacher uses Scratch in his Robotics and Engineering class; our librarian hosts a coding club in the library; and many of our students continue to build their coding skills with Scratch on their own. On any given day, one can expect to see some of our students working on Scratch coding projects.

Resources
We are committed to sharing and enhancing education in how we reinterpret STEM and Digital Technologies:

If you want to see the beginnings of this journey, take a look at the materials on the Our Beginnings page.
To see examples of how real industry problems can and have been solved in our sessions, visit the case studies on the Authentic Problem Solving page
Concerned with links to curriculum? Have a look at the Curriculum Mapping page to see how one of the case studies has been linked to the Australian Maths & Science curriculum for Year 8 and 10.
All these resources are provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

STEMeD Workshop
The STEMeD workshops produced wonderful resources that we want to share with the broader education community to enable students in every classroom in Australia to engage with and ideate on genuine STEMeD and Digital Technologies problems that matter.

Adding a letter to that restrictive STEM acronym — A for Arts — opens new doors to learning.

When arts and creativity are embraced as an integral part of the STEM world, it’s a win-win for students, professionals and companies alike. “Today’s STEM professions are demanding more curious, multitalented people than ever before,” says Arens. “I would not discount an art student’s interest in science any less than I would an engineer. In the end, the world’s best solutions are going to come from teams of people that are open to thinking differently.”

Just consider one of our most famous and accomplished scientists in history: Albert Einstein, also a dedicated and talented musician, who began playing the violin at age five. “Einstein is a perfect example of why we need art and creativity in education,” says Fox. “He came into physics from a different perspective with different questions and was able to come up with solutions and thought experiments that conventionally trained physicists were unable to conceive because they were ‘stuck’ in the old world of thought.”