The importance of STEM Education has become central to discussions about the future of schooling over the past 20 years. Predicated on the idea that a primary purpose of schooling is to prepare skilled and knowledgeable workers, these discussions have been grounded, in part, in cold-war era concerns about rapid advancements in STEM fields driven by more efficient and effective application of the systematic and structured ways of thinking that are common to these disciplines. However, curricula and pedagogical routines in these fields are fully established, and changing curricula, and reforming instructional practice, has been a daunting process. In this paper we examine the idea that educators can draw on the kinds of learning experiences that occur in informal educational settings, like "Makerspaces," to shape in-school activities in ways that make learning STEM content more contextualized, authentic, and meaningful for students. [For full proceedings, see ED571332.]