From episode: Transforming STEM Education with Hands-On Experiences, Engineering Resources, and Diversity in Focus
of the major challenge for a lot of science teachers is they don't have engineering background. And then compartmental of that is resources. How does TIGS help? What kind of resources do you provide or can you provide the science teachers to meet the needs of students when it comes to engineering practices? Yeah, great question. I hear and I see that need and that problem all day, every day, too. And as far as the resources we provide, and I'll just back up actually to the engineering design process of a famous slogan, right? And that's an engineer's the STEM world's scientific method. And that's something that I just think is one of the coolest things. And it talks about brainstorming, which is an ideation phase and identifying the problem on paper and designing it. And then where the real fun happens, my opinion is the iteration of it, where you're improving things and then you're documenting. And that's all on top of the design and the actual build. That's where we're engineering and the engineering design process differentiates from just plain old science a little bit. And I think that's cool about this stuff. And as far as Stix goes, that's that is a big part of what we do is what if you were to ask me to part of our value add, if you will. It is that we make these fun, memorable, impactful STEM experiences for kids while at the same time making accessible for educators who are already being pulled in a million directions, not want to pull their hair out. So we've got all kinds of resources like these instructional videos on our website that aren't protected by passwords or log in for any means. They can access those and that's a student facing part and those videos. They take a lot of the heavy lifting out of the actual pedagogy and teaching for the teachers on top of showing instructional videos for how to build a fun, hands on project. And I've got a few behind my screen here when you want to see them. Yeah. Go ahead, please. Go ahead. Yeah. And I was just going to say that's all those videos are on top of lesson plans and activity guides. We even have another teacher tips video where we share what works and what doesn't while leading this project. Sorry for getting a little long winded on you, but we do have all kinds of great resources that make these fun, meaningful STEM projects really easy for teachers to teach, even without a STEM background. Oh, no, I don't mind you being a long winded, but I can keep going. I can. The moment you mention resources, my ears is all open. I love the sound of that resources. We are every teacher, especially every science teacher. Love the sound of that resources to teach all to integrate engineering practices within the science curriculum. This is really powerful. I know earlier we were talking about hydraulics and the wind turbine. I know you showed me. Do you mind sharing the rest of our audience? I got you. And this is always a popular one for me to bring to conferences and show people that type of thing. But this is just an example of some of the stuff that students get to build and be immersed in when they're doing projects with us is this is a cool hydraulic lift project. So you can see a little bit of the setup. Of course, they get immersed into a story. They learn the science behind this stuff, and then they get to build and test out a fun project like this hydraulic lift. I promise a funny business going on. It's just all the principles of hydraulics. And we teach about the industry related to that as well. This wind turbine project is one of my favorites as well. It deals with the renewable energy. The actual kit comes with a blow dryer or a hair dryer. I'm sorry to test this out, but I'll do my best with my mouth. Oh, that's pretty cool. Even a little bit of wind, not the wind turbine. And then I'll show you one more if you like. It's the stoplight project where we teach about the principles of electrical engineering and that kind of stuff. And of course, give them a chance to build a fun project. Hopefully the LED light is popping up. Yeah, it is. Kind of a fun project teaching them about electricity and current and everything associated with that. Oh, that is really awesome. That is really cool.
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