Making Science: Reimagining STEM Education in Middle School and Beyond

by Stevie Woods, Grave Jinglers (Foreword by), Barry Charles & the Deeper Beat (Editor)

Overview

Making Science: Reimagining STEM Education in Middle School and Beyond is a new look at STEM education for the future. Steeped in research and history, but as modern as a trip to Mars, this book will make you think deeply about the nature of science and science learning.  

Richly illustrated with examples of student work, this book offers project ideas, connections to the new Next Generation Science Standards, assessment strategies, and practical tips for educators. 

Anthropologist turned science and “making” teacher Christa Flores shares her classroom-tested lessons and resources for learning-by-making in the middle grades and beyond. Take a journey through science that explores how to make classrooms more engaging, inclusive, and reflective of real science from the world. Imaginative, lyrical, and astonishing lessons come to life as Christa unfolds her Problem-based Science curriculum for the middle years. 

For many students, middle school is a time when science class turns boring, as wonder turns to worksheets and dull experiments. Making Science: Reimagining STEM Education in Middle School and Beyond is about combining new technology from the maker movement, real world materials and a designer mindset to create personalized learning experiences that engage students in the wonder of science. Christa explores how to build science literacy that empowers students to become informed and engaged citizens and global problem-solvers. 

The book also includes a foreword by Steve Davee, Chief Maker Educator, Maker Education Initiative and “Case Stories” from a diverse group of elementary, middle, and high school science classes. These stories showcase how to use real science, digital fabrication, making, and design as a way to engage today’s youth. Making Science: Reimagining STEM Education in Middle School and Beyondcelebrates STEM and STEAM for every student, including those traditionally underserved in STEM education.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780997554366
Publisher:	Constructing Modern Knowledge LLC
Publication date:	09/29/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	194
File size:	15 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Christa Flores is a scientist and science educator, focused on the design of meaningful experiences for learners in formal and informal settings. She is a passionate speaker and writer about student-driven learning spaces, the maker movement and designing curriculum that affords a diverse array of learning styles, cultures and ideas to be leveraged in the classroom and beyond. In the transition from anthropologist to educator, Christa found that sharing her love of science and her curiosity about the world encouraged her students to explore science more deeply. Inspired by the maker movement in education, she co-founded the iLab, a classroom designed for material and digital making at Hillbrook, a K-8 school in Los Gatos, California. With the Hillbrook faculty, Christa designed a new curriculum called Problem-based Science, a model for STEM literacy with an emphasis on material science, in-depth projects, design thinking, collaboration and entrepreneurial activities. Christa graduated from the University of California, San Diego with a degree in biological anthropology and started a career as a primatology researcher. As her interest in teaching grew, she obtained a masters in secondary science education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She has a certificate from the Institute of Culinary Education in entrepreneurialism and sustainable food systems. She is a Senior Fellow in the NSF funded Stanford University FabLearn program studying making in education and how to assess student learning in a maker classroom. Christa is the author of the book, Making Science: Reimagining STEM Education in Middle School and Beyond, and a contributor to the book, Meaningful Making: Projects and Inspirations for Fab Labs and Makerspaces from the Stanford University FabLearn Fellows.
Steve is the Director of Education for the non-profit Maker Education Initiative located in Oakland, California. For eight years Steve was the Documentation and Technology Specialist and a Math and a Science Teacher at Opal Public Charter School of the Portland Children's Museum. Prior to Opal, Steve was a biochemist at the University of Arizona and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the Oregon Health and Sciences University. Steve is the founder of CoLab Tinkering, which provides tinkering camps and workshops. He regularly shares the incredible work and capabilities of children through video, photography and presentations. Steve has B.S. degrees in Physics and Biochemistry/Biophysics, and an M.S. in Biochemistry.
Sylvia Martinez is co-author of Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering the Classroom, a book that has been called the "bible of the maker movement for classrooms". She speaks and writes around the world to advocate for authentic learning using real world design principles, modern technology, and hands-on experiences. A popular international keynote, workshop leader, and consultant, Sylvia speaks on topics of design thinking and making, the lessons for schools from the global Maker Movement, student empowerment, STEM, gender issues in technology, games and learning, and creating a school-wide technology ecology. Sylvia weaves examples from present day schools that use technology, especially computational technology, in authentic ways with her own experiences from the real world of work in game development and aerospace engineering. Before this, Sylvia was President of Generation YES, a non-profit organization evangelizing student leadership for tech-savvy youth for over a decade. Prior to this, Sylvia oversaw product development, design and programming for consumer software, video games, and educational games at several software publishing companies. Martinez started her career as an electrical engineer designing high frequency receiver systems and navigation software for GPS satellites. She holds a master's in educational technology from Pepperdine, and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from UCLA.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

1 - Deconstructing Science Literacy

2 - Tools for Making Science

3 - The Case for Design and Making in Science Class 

4 - Problem-based Science, a Constructionist Curriculum

5 - Assessment: How Do We Know What They Know?

6 - K-12 Case Stories, a Practicum 

7 - Constructionist Teacher Survival Guide 

8 - The Art of Science

9 - Making Science Work for Everyone 

Epilogue

Bibliography

About the Author