Amid the maker movement, educators are proposing various making activities with programmable artifacts to prepare students for coping with the challenges in the twenty-first century. Today, the "4C" skills--critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration--are regarded as significant learning outcomes in Science,…

Computational thinking (CT) and modeling are authentic practices that scientists and engineers use frequently in their daily work. Advances in computing technologies have further emphasized the centrality of modeling in science by making computationally enabled model use and construction more accessible to scientists. As such, it is important for…

This paper describes the work done by sixth grade students to achieve and sustain productive and personally meaningful lines of inquiry with computational models. The capacity to frame interactions with tools as dialogic exchanges with co-participants is a productive practice for disciplinary engagement in science and for computational thinking…

Underrepresented populations such as women, African-Americans, and Latinos/as often come to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers by less traditional paths than White and Asian males. To better understand how and why women might shift toward STEM, particularly computer science, careers, we investigated the education and…

Israel suffers from a growing problem of socio-economic gaps between those who live in the center of the country and residents of outlying areas. As a result, there is a low level of accessibility to higher education among the peripheral population. The goal of the Sidney Warren Science Education Center for Youth at Tel-Hai College is to…