60 South Bay Accent ANDREA CIPRIANI MECCHI The still evolving result appears to be a fundamental shift in how and what students are being taught. It’s easy but wrong to think that simply having iPads in the classroom constitutes a STEM education. While a STEM curriculum might (but doesn’t necessarily have to) involve electronic devices, at its heart it rolls together an interdisciplinary, inquiry-based, hands-on approach designed to engage students and maintain their interest. ROBOTS ATTRACT ATTENTION Which brings us back to those robots. According to STEM lobbyists, American children are not mastering 21st century skills crucial for ensuring economic prosperity. In short, their argument goes, since a significant number of jobs will be in STEM-related fields, our workforce of tomorrow will be ill-prepared unless things change soon. But just try that line of reasoning with a fifth-grader. “I don’t say to my students, ‘You guys should do engineering so you can make money,’” says Sharon Marzouk, instructional technology coordinator at Woodland School. “Instead it’s, ‘Hey, you want to build a robot?’ Because once people start learning about robots, you have to peel them away.” With a degree in mechanical engineering, Marzouk knows plenty about robots, having helped develop an interactive robot program at San Jose’s Tech Museum. Two years ago, Marzouk joined Woodland, a prekindergarten through eighth grade MERRYHILL SCHOOLS At Merryhill School, teachers encourage students to work in teams to design real solutions for real problems. Portola Valley school, and she represents a new wave of STEM teaching. Woodland previously had computer classes, but Marzouk views her course as “more of a technology program. I take all that stuff I found interesting about mechanical engineering and blend in computer skills, research and things that can help students excel in other classes.” By integrating robotics into the classroom, children are not only introduced to programming, but they also experience yearlong projects designed to encourage innovation, problem solving and group work. These skills are considered crucial to STEM success. In the “economies that existed 50 years ago, it was enough to master the ‘Three Rs’ (reading, writing, and arithmetic),” says a whitepaper authored Recently, FOURTH-GRADERS were challenged to DESIGN an airlift delivery vehicle for flood victims that could keep rescue items dry and intact.
South Bay Accent - Aug/Sep 2014
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