This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase student motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). Voices to Hear (V2H) will use the oral tradition of storytelling to empower Native American students (middle school, high school and college) to engage in environmental decision-making and scientific communication, while building a stronger sense of their ethnic identity.

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by bringing together youth (grades 2-5), their families, librarians, and professional engineers in an informal environment centered on engaging youth with age-appropriate, technology-rich STEM learning experiences fundamental to the engineering design process.

This Innovative Technology Experience for Teachers and Students project provides a model for increasing student interest in STEM careers and active engagement of business and industry partners with grade 6-12 aged youth in Arizona. The Chief Science Officers (CSO) program expands on the student government model to select one or several youth at participating middle or high schools who champion STEM interest, engagement, and communication. On-campus, CSOs identify and lead STEM opportunities such as speakers, field trips, and science nights, and other activities.

The project is designed to develop, implement and assess an educational model intended to improve Native American student science identity through culturally relevant use of technology that can directly improve the well being of their communities. The project will engage 90 low-income, high school Native American students from the rural Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho through a program of educational activities centered on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and remote sensing.

The Power of Data (POD) project is designed to increase secondary student awareness of and interest in careers that use geospatial technology (GST) and data; increase their knowledge of educational pathways to enter these careers; and develop their 21st century workforce skills. Building on successful implementation in Arizona, the 4-year project will be carried out on a larger scale. The project will use a train-the-trainer approach involving some 30 teacher educators, 90 teachers and 27,000 students.

Nationwide, middle-school youth from underrepresented communities have few opportunities to engage in authentic STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) investigations that build on the students' intrinsic interests in space science and robotics to increase their interests in both ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and STEM careers. ITEAMS II is a collaborative project of science educators and researchers at the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

The GIS Resources and Applications for Career Education (GRACE) project builds upon a recent NSF-funded project, the Mayors Youth Technology Corps (MYTC), that developed a model of geographic information systems and technology (GIS/T) based education. MYTC developed a model of purposeful applications of GIS/T-based education for STEM careers in the workplace that provided youth in economically disadvantaged communities experience using and applying GIS/T to real world situations.

In existing CryptoClub after school programs, middle school students use mathematics to make and break secret codes. The CryptoClub website has tools for encrypting, messages to crack, treasure hunts and other activities. In this project, the learning in fifteen Crypto Clubs is extended by having the students generate tutorials that explain how they solve mathematics and cryptographic problems. The flexibility of the after school setting provides the opportunity to experiment with content and technology.

The Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Center at the Monterey Community College in collaboration with Washington State University is engaging in a scale-up study of the remote operated vehicle (ROV) program to new audiences of middle and high school students and teachers. Using a train the trainers approach, the MATE ROV project is conducting at least 45 regional professional development workshops in 15 regions for a total of 500 teachers.

This Learning and Research Center will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by providing technical support to all ITEST projects, facilitating national dissemination of ITEST project outcomes, and further developing the ITEST research and development community.