A standards-based tool for middle school teachers to engage students in STEM fields (Research-to-Practice) Strand: K-12 engineering resources: Best practices in curriculum design !

Middle school teachers play an instrumental role in promoting student interest in science and engineering fields. Studies have shown that engaging students early on can inspire students to pursue degrees in STEM fields for higher education. This work focussed on providing middle school teachers with resources to engage students using hands-on activities and demonstrations directly related to the state science standards. During the Fall 2012 term, a library of brief historical perspective, applications and activities was generated for 8th grade physical science standards. The demonstrations and activities were specifically selected to promote interest and engage students, while being easy-to-implement for the teachers. Beginning Spring 2013, video demonstrations were produced to assist content preparation. Concomitantly, the resources were designed to be accessible as a database on an iOS device such as iPhone, iPod Touch or an iPad. In particular, an app was designed to deliver the content with the ability to track progress. The app serves as a powerful reference and a guide for teachers to integrate science and engineering activities within their curriculum. Towards the end of June 2013 a workshop was organized for teachers to provide feedback on the project and test the beta version of the app. The project and the app were favorably received from workshop attendees, with several of the teachers requesting early access to the database for the 2013-2014 school year. In addition, crucial feedback and insight was collected from the focus group discussions following the app demonstration. It is expected as teachers begin to use the app and the content within, feedback and contributions from user community will further improve the quality and breadth of the content.