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…

The separation of suspensions and immiscible liquids by the laboratory centrifuge is widely used in such fields as chemistry, biology, biochemistry, and clinical medicine. In this paper, an Arduino-based microcentrifuge was fabricated using a computer DVD (digital versatile disc) drive. The hardware part consisted of inexpensive mechanical and…

The authors introduce the readers to a project that highlights digital heritage in early childhood. The highlighted teachers partnered with an anthropologically-trained archaeologist who utilizes advanced digital technologies to enhance public understanding of cultural heritage. This collaboration emphasized social studies and reinforced…

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…

Consumer-grade manufacturing tools such as 3D printers are becoming increasingly prevalent in STEM education environments, especially as tools to develop inexpensive, tactile visualization models. Presented here is a workflow for creating 3D-printed periodic tables displaying a variety of trends from traditionally taught relationships such as…

Protein ORIGAMI (http://ibg.kit.edu/protein_origami) is a browser-based web application that allows the user to create straightforward 3D paper models of folded peptides for research, teaching and presentations. An amino acid sequence can be turned into a-helices, ß-strands and random coils that can be printed out and folded into properly scaled…

While many students may struggle to make sense of a mathematical formula and its practical implications, they can benefit greatly from an intuitive visualization and the engineering application of the topic. Effective STEM programs create clear connections at least with two subject areas, which translates into an enhanced student learning…

The increased availability of noncommercial 3D printers has provided instructors and students improved access to printing technology. However, printing complex ball-and-stick molecular structures faces distinct challenges, including the need for support structures that increase with molecular complexity. MolPrint3D is a software add-on for the…

In this paper, we present the details of the development of a smartphone spectrometer for education using a 3D printer and characterized the performance by comparison with a paper craft spectrometer. The optical design and the narrow slit used in the build resulted in the formation of accurate images of the slit on the image sensor leading to a…

Many educators view makerspaces as a means of increasing student engagement in K-12 classrooms. As faculty and staff of the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan, we have noted low comfort levels in using and experimenting with technology. For this reason, we decided to create a place in which pre-service teachers could test and…

This paper describes our concrete efforts to improve the functions of the computer rooms in the Information Processing Center from among several organisational strategies which can assume a large role in the next-generation education, while examining the practice of active learning by the faculty in all classes using ICT equipment. We implemented…

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented shift in how health science education is delivered (Sandars et al., 2020). With face-to-face learning, such as lab and classroom interactions, largely unavailable during the pandemic, institutions have been required to quickly shift the learning environment to a fully virtual format. While…

Tangible models help students and researchers visualize chemical structures in three dimensions (3D). 3D printing offers a unique and straightforward approach to fabricate plastic 3D models of molecules and extended solids. In this article, we prepared a series of digital 3D design files of molecular structures that will be useful for teaching…

A 3D printer is used to prepare a variety of models representing potential energy as a function of two geometric coordinates. These models facilitate the teaching of structure-energy relationships in molecular conformations and in chemical reactions.

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…