Amanda is in her fifteenth year at Mashpee Middle High School where she teaches Technology, Engineering, Robotics, and Intro to Computer Science at the secondary level. She has been recognized for her innovative efforts in STEM Education including in 2020 as an ITEEA Teacher Excellence recipient and in 2019 as the Massachusetts STEM Teacher of the…

Informal STEM education experiences can be invaluable to students as a means of developing their future career goals and career interests. Extracurricular programs in the form of clubs, competitions, teams, and activities provide a platform for these informal education experiences. There are many STEM-focused extracurricular options for students,…

In the field of technology and engineering education, educators are limited by their inability to predict what is coming; as the saying goes, they are preparing their students for jobs that do not even exist yet. Two adaptive approaches can help prepare students for this uncertainty: (1) teaching broad skills that can be applied in new situations;…

According to the new federal spending bill signed into law in March 2018, funding is being provided for education programs and initiatives in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Many provisions allow for funding to support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education that includes diverse learners in activities such as…

UNITE is a program sponsored by the Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP, 2015). The STEM Enrichment Activities of AEOP are designed to spark student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, especially among the underserved and those in earlier grades and educators by providing exciting, engaging, interactive, hands-on…

Computational Thinking (CT) is being promoted as "a fundamental skill used by everyone in the world by the middle of the 21st Century" (Wing, 2006). CT has been effectively integrated into history, ELA, mathematics, art, and science courses (Settle, et al., 2012). However, there has been no analogous effort to integrate CT into…

Documentation of ideas and the engineering design process is a critical, daily component of a professional engineer's job. While patent protection is often cited as the primary rationale for documentation, it can also benefit the engineer, the team, company, and stakeholders through creating a more rigorously designed and purposeful solution.…

Sensors of all kinds play significant roles in the way that we use and interact with technological devices today. Smartphones, household appliances, automobiles, and other products that we use every day incorporate many different kinds of sensors. While the sensors are hidden from view in the products, appliances, and tools that we use, they…

Any parent, teacher, or coach who works with students today will admit there is a lot of competition for a student's time and attention. After school dismisses, video games, homework, sports, extracurricular activities, and more occupy students' time. It is equally as challenging to compete for their attention during the school day. New electives…