Resources included in these libraries were submitted by ITEST projects or STELAR and are relevant to the work of the NSF ITEST Program. PDFs and/or URLs to the original resource are included in the resource description whenever possible. In some cases, full text publications are located behind publishers’ paywalls and a fee or membership to the third party site may be required for access. Permission for use must be requested through the publisher or author listed in each entry.
DIY Toolkit: Controlling Your Online Presence
Curricular Materials
MAINTAINING PRIVACY, MARKETING YOURSELF, MAKING SOCIAL CHANGE. Love it or loathe it, social media is a powerful force in today’s constantly-documented world. Thanks to the proliferation of smart phones, high-speed internet and social networking sites, teens today have unprecedented access to their peers — and sometimes unknowingly also allow others access to their information. In short, when social media is put to good use, it is one of the most influential tools teens can use for civic engagement and social change, not to mention self marketing (just ask former YouTube star Justin Bieber!)
DIY Toolkit: Introduction To Fact-Checking For Journalists
Curricular Materials
As journalists — even ones just starting out — we face a lot of pressure to publish quickly, meeting our own deadlines and beating other outlets to the story. But the glory of getting the scoop doesn’t mean anything if the information you publish isn’t accurate. Corrections (or heaven forbid, retractions) do happen, sometimes to veteran journalists and well-known media outlets. But as someone just starting out, you can’t afford for your editors or readers to label you as a reporting noob who can’t be trusted with a big story. So how do journalists keep themselves and their work honest? Enter
DIY Toolkit - Sound Science: 4 Audio Project Ideas For STEM Educators
Curricular Materials
Attention all STEM teachers — are you looking for ways to incorporate music and sound into your classroom? Check out these hands-on DIY ideas from Youth Radio’s Brains and Beakers science speaker series. Explore creative ways to experience sound — from digital visualization to science rap battles to creating your own instruments out of scrap parts.
DIY Toolkit: How To Make An Infographic
Curricular Materials
SHOW, DON’T TELL. That’s the general idea of infographics, which use visuals to make numbers/stats/processes easier to understand. While it’s easy to enjoy a well crafted infographic, creating one can be challenging. What type of visual fits your data? How should you style your graphic? What tools can you use to create infographics without starting from scratch?Making an infographic is a multistep process, so we’ll break this tutorial into two parts. In this lesson, we’ll walk you through the basics of making your own infographic, depending on the data at hand.- See more at: https://youthradio
d.loft Curriculum Units
Curricular MaterialsThe d.loft STEM curriculum units provide an integrated approach to building STEM knowledge and skills while engaging students in both identifying and solving real-world problems using a design thinking approach.
Design Time: learning that is transformative
PublicationDesign Time: Learning That Is Transformative is a short documentary film that follows a group of students from Salt Lake City's West Side as they learn about design thinking. The film demonstrates the power of learning through design thinking, as the students take on the challenge of designing a community center for returning military veterans.
The Lab in the Classroom: 3D Printers in Schools
PublicationAn article in Make Magazine detailing the history of the Lab School, its collaboration with the Smithsonian, and the work of its students.
Teach STEAM with Toys
PublicationA new field of engineering called mechatronics combines mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science and makes all three disciplines accessible to surprisingly young students.
Learning about Surface Area through a Digital Fabrication-Augmented Unit
PublicationSurface area is consistently identified as a curriculum standard for K-12 students and it regularly appears on national and international assessments. Recently, many schools began acquiring digital fabrication and advanced manufacturing equipment. The growing use of digital fabrication in classrooms raises the question of whether or not this technology can be used to improve students’ understanding of surface area. The specific question we explore in this paper is: How did participation in a digital fabrication-augmented surface area unit affect 5th grade students’ ability to solve surface
Using Digital Fabrication to Support Student Learning
PublicationDesktop digital fabrication technologies provide students with access to concrete and virtual manipulatives, which have both been identified as useful instructional tools to support student learning in a variety of different content areas, such as mathematics. In particular, these technologies can be used to help support students' development of conceptual understandings of three-dimensional measurement. This article describes how a digital fabrication-augmented unit supported the teaching and learning of surface area. Our goal was to see how working with both virtual and concrete