In this article, the authors explain how they leveraged the popularity of the "Star Wars" franchise to introduce a task steeped in popular culture as a fun way to engage their students in investigating complex mathematics that have real-life connections to careers in toy design and engineering design in general. The authors share various…

Assistive technologies are frequently used to help disabled students to access core and expanded core curricula and to improve their functional, communication and literacy skills. Non-optical low vision devices and optical and tactile graphics technologies are some of the assistive technologies used by visually impaired students in today's…

The interaction between water and surfaces is observed in our daily lives and is used in laboratories to study materials properties, such as interfacial tension. Making the connection between fundamental scientific phenomena and everyday observations is a powerful method of highlighting the importance and relevance of science to the K-12…

Systemic gender inequality and sexual discrimination continues across a wide spectrum of social, political, and economic fields. Using three key feminist curriculum and pedagogy principles (decentering norms, centering difference, distributing leadership) we employ feminist pedagogy by facilitating curriculum development and implementation that is…

More and more schools are acquiring advanced manufacturing equipment. Activities that incorporate the use of this equipment for the purpose of teaching some academic content can either be designed or redesigned for other educational purposes as well. This article describes how the authors extended an activity that was initially designed to help…

One goal of the NIH SEPA (Science Education Partnership Awards) program is to create partnerships among biomedical researchers, teachers and schools. The MSOE Center for BioMolecular Modeling (CBM) has leveraged the support from a series of SEPA awards to create a multifaceted outreach program that connects biomolecular researchers and their…

Picture this: a PhD chemist, PhD science educator, and a preservice Latina elementary educator walk into an aftercare program for primary and intermediate students from a rural school. These students are identified as low income and at risk and therefore eligible to participate in this school-provided aftercare. While across the state, these same…

There is currently significant interest in 3D fabrication in middle school classrooms. At its best 3D printing can be utilized in authentic design projects that integrate math, science, and technology, which facilitate deep learning by students. In essence, students are able to tinker in a virtual world using 3D design software and then tinker in…

Today there are a number of 3D printing technologies that are low cost and within the budgets of middle and high school programs. Educational technology companies offer a variety of 3D printing technologies and parallel curriculum materials to enable technology and engineering teachers to easily add 3D learning activities to their programs.…

With the rise of personal desktop 3D printing, a wide spectrum of educational opportunities has become available for educators to leverage this technology in their classrooms. Until recently, the ability to create physical 3D models was well beyond the scope, skill, and budget of many schools. However, since desktop 3D printers have become readily…

In this article, middle school mathematics teacher Jennifer Zakrzewski describes how she successfully incorporated iPads and Apple TV (for projection of iPad screens) into her classroom while having her students solve a problem about mangoes. As Zakrzewski began a unit on multiplying and dividing fractions, she chose to start with the Mangoes…

When new leadership assumed responsibility for the Glen Cove School District back in 2005, it was in dire need of a makeover. State test scores were dismal, and its high school had fallen onto the New York Schools in Need of Regents Review list. Failed budgets had forced the district to operate under contingency restrictions, including a…

Look no further than to the popularity of C-SPAN's annual video documentary competition for middle and high schoolers, and it's obvious that video editing, and the technology that comes with it, is important to today's students. In the past it was a complex, involved, and expensive process. Video editing is now within the reach of anybody with a…