12 Ways to bring STEM to Your Classroom

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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.

Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy

Author: Greg Young

3D Printing, Computer Aided Design (CAD) and G-Code Basics

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Students learn how 3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, is revolutionizing the manufacturing process. First, students learn what considerations to make in the engineering design process to print an object with quality and to scale. Students learn the basic principles of how a computer-aided design (CAD) model is converted to a series of data points then turned into a program that operates the 3D printer. The activity takes students through a step-by-step process on how a computer can control a manufacturing process through defined data points. Within this activity, students also learn how to program using basic G-code to create a wireframe 3D shapes that can be read by a 3D printer or computer numerical control (CNC) machine.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Matthew Jourden