A team of educational researchers, scientists, and engineers from NC State University, UNC Chapel Hill, and Duke University are partnering with teachers and administrators from Durham County Schools, Lee County Schools, the NC Business Committee for Education, and an international gaming company to pilot GRADUATE (Games Requiring Advanced Developmental Understanding and Achievement in Technological Endeavors).

This project studies how to use co-robot systems and math-oriented co-robotics competitions to enhance student engagement, increase student motivation in learning Algebra and subsequent STEM subjects, and interest in pursuing STEM related careers and post-secondary study. The project leverages a unique robotics platform called Mobot (an intelligent modular system designed for K-12 education) to prepare a cohort of teachers to engage their students with relevant pedagogy that illustrates abstract math concepts with concrete applications using computing and robotics.

DAPCEP's youth-based Engineering and Information Technology Education Project aims to engage students in activities that will increase their access to IT within the context of engineering and increase their opportunities to explore related college and career paths. One hundred twenty African American and Latino 7th and 9th grade students and 180 parents participate in carefully planned courses designed to expand their knowledge of engineering and to lay the foundation for successful lifelong learning related to a range of IT.

The DesignIT Studios youth-based project creates four IT studio sites to work with 160 7th and 8th grade students. The four project sites—a central site at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, sites at each of two Boys and Girls Club branches, and a site at an area school—infuse digital technology and science, math, and engineering concepts into a creative art studio environment. Projects, springing from the children’s own cultural backgrounds and interests, incorporate commonplace materials with digital media to naturally create fluency in IT.

The Environmental Science Information Technology Activities (ESITA) youth-based project provides opportunities for students in grades 9 and 10 from disadvantaged backgrounds to learn about and use IT. During each of three years, 48 students will acquire and employ IT skills as they conduct air and water quality research in their communities and research attitudes toward, and feelings about, IT among their peers.

Eyes in the Sky is a comprehensive professional development program that prepares 48 STEM teachers to use geospatial IT, computer mapping programs, aerial and satellite images, and image analysis software with their students in community-based research projects. Teachers engage in a distance-learning course, two weeks of face-to-face workshops, a classroom implementation phase, and a research showcase event.

The IMMEX Fayette Consortium is a comprehensive project for urban students and teachers that provides students in grades 7–12 with a solid foundation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This is a community-integrated model in which teams of teachers, students, business partners, and higher education faculty construct interactive, problem-solving simulations integrating standards-based curricular content and technology issues commonly encountered in STEM careers in technology institutes for teachers and students.

The Science Museum of Minnesota’s youth-based ITEST program engages inner city teens in creating a learning community for STEM education through creative technology projects led by adult professionals in sciences and the arts.

Drawing on curriculum and software developed at MIT, this comprehensive project will develop key skills in an emerging area within IT with broad applications, while enhancing interest in IT and modeling the integration of IT into the curriculum.

With primary project activities completed in August, 2006, Ocean Explorers was a three-year project funded by the Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and implemented by the Center for Image Processing in Education (CIPE). The project employed GIS, digital image analysis, and ocean science as ways of incorporating information technology (IT) into science and mathematics education in California.