From Getting Smart, here are 12 ways to start teaching STEM

Want more STEM experiences for your students but don’t know where to start? Want to infuse art into science and boost STEAM experiences?
Before exploring how to do STEM, let’s define what it is. Everybody teaches science and math—STEM adds technology and engineering to the equation; STEAM adds art. Common elements of quality STEM learning include:
• Design-focus: using design tools and techniques to attack big problems or opportunity (challenge-based, problem-based learning).
• Active application: applying knowledge and skills to real-world situations and constructing or prototyping solutions to challenges (maker, project-based learning).
• Integration: real world problems aren’t limited to a discipline—solutions almost always draw from many fields.

I wanted to make a realistic animatronic heart, and as I was developing the 3D printed mechanism I used a sock to try and get a vague idea of how the silicone skin would move once the design was finished. Since the silicone casting turned out to be quite challenging and very expensive, the sock test gave me the idea to instead use a slightly elastic fabric to make a plush heart design, which could be fitted over the 3D printed mechanism.

This project is very simple on the 3D printing/assembly/electronics side, but I'd recommend you have a little sewing experience because, as a sewing amateur, I'm not 100% confident in my patterns. A sewing machine is not necessarily required and a lot of the sewing is by hand anyway, but it would certainly be useful!

Artists are often particularly keen observers and precise recorders of the physical conditions of the natural world. As a result, paintings can be good resources for learning about ecology. Teachers can use this lesson to examine with students the interrelationship of geography, natural resources, and climate and their effects on daily life. It also addresses the roles students can take in caring for the environment. Students will look at paintings that represent cool temperate, warm temperate, and tropical climates.
In this lesson students will: Identify natural resources found in particular geographic areas; Discuss ways in which climate, natural resources, and geography affect daily life; Apply critical-thinking skills to consider the various choices artists have made in their representations of the natural world; Make personal connections to the theme by discussing ways they can be environmental stewards; Identify natural resources found in particular geographic areas; Discuss ways in which climate, natural resources, and geography affect daily life; Apply critical-thinking skills to consider the various choices artists have made in their representations of the natural world; Make personal connections to the theme by discussing ways they can be environmental stewards.

Students learn how forces are used in the creation of art. They come to understand that it is not just bridge and airplane designers who are concerned about how forces interact with objects, but artists as well. As "paper engineers," students create their own mobiles and pop-up books, and identify and use the forces (air currents, gravity, hand movement) acting upon them.

Grade level: graduate students, advanced undergrads, persons with analyzed research results

Course length: 1 semester, 4-6 months

Objective: This course empowers scientists to engage with their own data, each other, and the public through art. Through collective brainstorming, prototyping, and feedback from professional artists, students will create a project that expresses their own research through any artistic medium of their choice. The course typically culminates in a public art exhibition where students interact with a general audience to discuss their research, art, and what it means to be a scientist.

This resource is a collection of monthly at-home STEAM challenges that students in Grades K-6 can compete using objects found around the house.

This resource is a collection of monthly at-home STEAM challenges that students in Grades K-6 can compete using objects found around the house.

Novel representations and diverse perspectives can reveal new insights into complex systems, and can support rich understandings of the world. In this activity, students will identify and analyze the choices artists and scientists make when creating representations of living or non-living natural objects. This process will help students recognize the potential and place for their own articulation of how the world works. After drawing from nature, students will reflect on the process of representing information, then compare their drawings with that of a 16th-century artist. Students will consider what is included and what is excluded, and hypothesize about larger contexts and systems.

This lesson is a classroom activity where students learn to use their balance knowledge to create a beautiful mobile.

This lesson explores several of the recording mediums used throughout the early 20th century. Along the way, students learn how sound waves travel, how the human brain converts those waves to recognizable sound and how inventors learned to capture them on wax, magnetic tape, and finally as digital information. From there, this lesson then investigates the creative impulses and scientific developments that turned multitrack recording from a dream to a reality. Students also get hands-on experience using the Soundbreaking Mixing Board TechTool, which allows them to be sound engineers, playing with "the mix" of a multitrack studio.

This lesson investigates how electrifying the guitar was a contributing factor to the emergence of a sound that came to define Rock and Roll and, to a large extent, mid-20th century American popular culture. Featuring content from the PBS Soundbreaking episode, "Going Electric," which includes the guitar playing of luminaries Charlie Christian, Pete Townsend, Muddy Waters and Jimi Hendrix, this lesson examines the spirit of curiosity, adaptation and invention that characterized the early 1950s and in the 1960s led to the guitar's emergence as a versatile and attractive instrument for musicians and as the quintessential Rock and Roll icon.

This lesson introduces students to the Telharmonium, the Theremin, the Moog and the component on which all of their sound syntheses are formed: the sound wave. Students learn what a sound wave is, how it travels and how our bodies convert it into intelligible sound. Using the Soundbreaking Sound Wave TechTool, students learn to recognize four basic waveform shapes by sound and sight. This lesson also explores the role the synthesizer played in relation to people's perceptions of technology and culture in the 1970s, 80s and beyond.

This lesson explores the technology of "records" and what it meant to the people who consumed them. Students will learn how a record works and why a needle on a disc can record and play back music. Moreover, students will investigate how these technological changes had far reaching effects, even in the domestic setting. Finally, this lesson follows the 45 rpm and LP record through the airwaves of both AM and FM radio, using excerpts of broadcasts by the pioneering DJs Alan Freed and Tom Donahue and investigating how the possibilities and limitations of each medium and their respective places on the radio dial provide a framework for historical analysis.

In this lesson, the music and visuals of the Gorillaz album Plastic Beach is used to introduce students to the issue of plastic waste. Students are asked to calculate the percentage of plastic that goes unrecycled internationally, and illustrate a model of polyethylene to better understand why the molecular makeup of plastic creates both benefits and drawbacks. Finally, they evaluate various projects that are currently being undertaken to curb plastic waste, and develop their own similar program or project that they could employ on a local level.

In this lesson, students understand the principles of transduction and the role of transducers by looking at the history of the guitar. They begin by examining how an acoustic and electric guitar function, and then construct their own "digital" guitar from cardboard, conductive tape, and a Makey Makey circuit board. After performing their own "riffs" on their digital guitars, they discuss how each type of guitar transduces sound waves, electrical currents, and/or digital signals.

In this lesson, students listen to Flint-based rapper Jon Connor's song "Fresh Water for Flint" to better understand the sense of frustration and injustice people living in the city felt during the water crisis. Students then experiment with creating their own water filtration system to better understand the scientific and engineering principles behind water treatment. Lastly, they consider the biological effects of lead poisoning and determine specific, political, economic, and scientific causes behind the Flint water crisis.

A community mural; K-5 students, artists, teachers, business people, and community leaders worked together to create a mural.

This is an integrated lesson which is introduced using the book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. Butterfly metamorphosis is explored through art, math, and writing.

This is a really fun and informative lesson that I do with my high school Programming/technology class to break up the monotony of beginner programming. However; this lesson can be used and applied in essentially any class and for many purposes, and to address many areas. One of the other really nice things about this lesson is that it can be extended to hit many points including physics, math, and advanced engineering.

Throughout the building period, I would present teams with a challenge (puzzle, build, etc…) and the first team to complete it would get a prize. It could be more modification time, extra materials, etc…)

The materials (including hot glue guns) can be purchased at Wal Mart or a similar store for around $20-25, if ordering through your district isn’t an option. With those purchases, it gives you a lot more materials than needed which can be used for additional similar projects.

This is a really fun and informative lesson that I do with my high school Programming/technology class to break up the monotony of beginner programming. However; this lesson can be used and applied in essentially any class and for many purposes, and to address many areas. One of the other really nice things about this lesson is that it can be extended to hit many points including physics, math, and advanced engineering.

Throughout the building period, I would present teams with a challenge (puzzle, build, etc…) and the first team to complete it would get a prize. It could be more modification time, extra materials, etc…)

The materials (including hot glue guns) can be purchased at Wal Mart or a similar store for around $20-25, if ordering through your district isn’t an option. With those purchases, it gives you a lot more materials than needed which can be used for additional similar projects.