Geering Up! 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD)
STEM learning is more than different subject areas simply threaded together. Rather, STEM learning is “a seamless experience for the students that scaffolds the use of disciplinary concepts and practices for solving inter-disciplinary problems” (Dasgupta, Magana, & Vieira, 2019, p. 123). In keeping with that amalgamated spirit, this week’s focus as Create, Make, Innovate! wraps […]
Setting Our Sights on Virtual Reality
Virtual realities (VR) are computer-created environments in which people can interact with what has been programmed or, when linked to some kind of network or on-line access, with each other. Typically, users wear some kind of headset or goggles to facilitate their sensory experience, which is primarily visual (sometimes fully 360°) and perhaps aural and/or […]
Design-Based Learning: STEM and Simple Machines
Watching children play, particularly very young children, we can see they behave scientifically. Children observe and collect. They wonder and deduce, and they’re methodical. They collaborate – sometimes! – and when they’re puzzled, they experiment and make adjustments. At whatever age STEM learning occurs, though, make no mistake: it is real STEM learning, not mere […]
Secondary Science: some possibilities for digital tech integration
One cannot truly experience science without experiencing its technological dimension. As a result, emergent technologies have increasingly shaped students’ experiences with science as well as influenced their relationships with natural/physical world. (Oliveira et al, 2019) This fall, I had the pleasure once again of working with two of our Science Ed instructors, Leslie Johnstone and […]
Design-Based Learning (DBL) and Challenge Learning
“… we learn by doing.” So observed Aristotle in his study on how we should live, The Nicomachean Ethics, a work that is named – so scholars think – out of fondness for Aristotle’s father and son, both of whom were named Nicomachus. While obviously not a new concept to educators, the principle of learning-by-doing […]
