A model of my own personal STEAM education pedagogy. The purpose of education is to effectively teach students new knowledge, understanding, and skills. To do this, classroom activities need to move from passive to active to creative on this scale, to where students are creating their own educational content or becoming scientists themselves. Moving our classrooms to the right will make them more student centered, meaningful, and memorable.
The purpose of this page is to share what I have learned about educational pedagogy, digital and online learning, global education, and STEAM teaching through classes, workshops, and conferences I’ve attended. It includes sub-pages for the following:
This section contains information and discussions of educational pedagogy or theory related to STEM education. It includes my own personal theories based on over 25 years as a STEM educator, starting back before the term STEM was even invented.
This section includes links to lessons and other ideas concerning how to use digital technology to teach STEM lessons, including a digital technology assessment of my own school. I provide some lesson plan ideas and how to tie technology to various classes and put the “T” into STEM. For more resource ideas and links, go to my Resources page.
As part of the Teachers for Global Classrooms program training, I created a Digital Technology Assessment of my school, American Academy of Innovation, in the form of a ThingLink with hotspots detailing our ongoing efforts.
Here is the link to that assessment:
https://www.thinglink.com/scene/853070881360969730
Here is a screen shot of the ThingLink itself:
A screen shot of the Digital Technology Assessment I did as part of my TGC Course.
This assessment was done during our first year of operation, and I can report that we have made great improvements in just one year. In addition to the Chromebooks and Dell laptops we purchased last year, we have moved toward an all Apple device model, with MacBook Airs in two carts (50 altogether), iMacs (30) in a computer lab which I use to teach digital media and video production classes, and about 120 iPads in six carts. We now have 380 students, which gives us very close to a 1:1 computer to student ratio.
It has been a challenge getting all these new machines working with digital management software. We’ve added licenses for Adobe Creative Cloud (yay!), Wolfram Alpha, and Autodesk 3D modeling software. We are now adding apps for the iPads. Once everything is working together, we should have an incredible system. I am moving ahead with a full suite of digital media, 3D animation, and video production courses with a goal of teaching all students at AAI how to express themselves through digital imagery and videos. This will enhance our ability to communicate and collaborate globally.
This section provides links to tools you can use to assess the degree of global competency you have as a teacher and the levels which your students have achieved.
Through a number of field studies and projects I have participated in, I have become a firm believer that effective STEM education must be based on the collection, analysis, and discussion of authentic data. Ultimately, students should become scientists and engineers even in the high school classroom and communicate their research with a wider audience, perhaps even submitting and presenting posters or papers at professional scientific conferences.
In October 2017 I will attend a conference in Washington D.C. on how to help students conduct original research, sponsored by the Society for Science and the Public. This section will summarize what I learn at the conference, describe previous projects my students have worked on, and provide links to authentic data available online.
To help students develop creativity, which is essential for STEM fields, I believe that the arts should be incorporated into STEM education. To provide the context that is also essential, history should be incorporated as well. My preferred acronym for this is: STEM-AH, or STEM with Arts and History, because art and history provide the “Ah!” in STEM. Maybe this is pushing the acronym a bit, but it captures what I am trying to accomplish here. This section will provide links to posts and exterior sites hat directly relate to STEAM or STEM-AH, and some lesson plan ideas that you can use, modify, and share as you need.
