My interest in STEM comes from the need for our grandchildren to survive (and compete) in our STEM driven world, and my desire to share the experiences from 50 years of working as an engineer, and from riding Moore’s law from one end to the other, applying technology to the engineering process itself.
The BBC micro:bit (mbit) is used in several projects here. I was introduced to it by a middle school student at a STEM project fair. It is a single board computer designed for use in schools. It costs $25, has onboard accelerometer, light and temperature sensors, compass and A/D converters. It can be programmed with blocks, JavaScript and Python in a browser app created by Microsoft, and has worldwide adoption, and an extensive network. of add-ons.
The students had built a security box. When you open the box it senses the light and sounds an alarm. Apart from the box, all you need is the mbit. As a project it meets two important criteria. 1) Affordable and 2) accomplishable with a middle schooler’s attention span, about 10 minutes. I suppose there here might have been several attention bursts.
As a dad, I realized that my kids believed that you were either smart or not, and if you were not, there was nothing you could do about it. Many people think that way, perhaps it is why engineering is unpopular, and STEM programs are necessary. To my mind engineering and STEM are skills, which means they can be learned, and get better with practice.
I recall having that experience both at and outside high school. And it’s why I selected mechanical engineering for college. The professors taught applied math and applied science. they also did research but didn’t actually make stuff. The man who taught us how to design and make stuff was way down the academic scale, his title was Demonstrator, he introduced the process of starting with a concept, making a general arrangement drawing ,and then breaking it down into component details. Between my second and third years we took a third year projects detail drawings and made them in an apprentice machine shop. You don’t understand how much a thousandth of an inch is until you use a machine tool, and also remove it with a file!
How do we encourage young people to experience STEM the same way they experience playing a sport or making music, by learning and practicing? That is my goal in 4-R-STEM.