Next, a S.T.E.M. Lab textbook provides a roadmap to get through the detailed coursework, and makes it easier for students to stay on course. Divided into eight parts, which comes out to four chapters per semester, students print the free PDF download, using the school's computer-lab printers.
Chapter 1: Suborbital Spaceflight - Virgin Galactic - Quadratic Equations
Chapter 2: Orbital Payload - R.E.L. Skylon - Quadratic and Linear Equations
Chapter 3: Space Station Design - Bigelow Aerospace - Matrices
Chapter 4: Unpowered Glide Landing - Spaceport America - Trigonometry
Chapter 5: Delta V and Transfer Time - Hohmann Transfer - Square Root Equations
Chapter 6: Crew Capsule - The Boeing Co. - Linear Equations
Chapter 7: The Rocket Equation - The Boeing Co. - Exponential Equations
Chapter 8: Lunar Landing - The Boeing Co. - Finance
The pages are then placed into a three-ring binder that the school can purchase in lieu of expensive textbooks. Students get to practice the mathematics on worksheets that they can place into their textbook. The textbook thus becomes a type of hard-copy portfolio of student work and progress.
Each chapter is geared toward one aspect of science and mathematics. For example, Reaction Engines, Ltd. (R.E.L.) published the technical manual of their Skylon spacecraft online (5.1MB PDF), providing educators with a rich source of S.T.E.M.-related lesson-plan material. So, Chapter 2 of the textbook uses their published graphs to create the linear equations needed to determine the payload mass. For example, the app will ask for an input of launch site latitude and an orbital altitude, then output how much the Skylon can carry into space. These equations can be translated into a spreadsheet, where the students create an app (Click HERE to operate the prototype app).
Apps are then embedded in the student website, along with a slideshow of the science behind the app and an engineering journal. The website thus becomes a type of electronic portfolio of student work and progress.
At the end of each chapter (about 22 school days), students present their findings to the rest of the school in a festival atmosphere, where each student stands in front of their computer proudly displaying their slideshow and their app. Of course, politicians would want to have their pictures taken with these high-achievers, to keep up with their constituency, don't you know.
For teachers that aren't able to run a full-blown S.T.E.M. lab at their school, shorter versions of these lessons exist in magazine form, so that the same concepts are still presented (but in a 1- or 2-day time frame). The magazine is downloaded and printed instead of the textbook. Students do not build apps or create a slideshow presentation, but they do get to use similar worksheets and learn the same basic concepts and ideas. Therefore, the magazine can be seen as providing day-long mini-S.T.E.M. projects and the textbook as providing quarter-semester S.T.E.M. lessons. These projects become excellent enrichment opportunities for high school students taking math and science classes.
The Unanswered Question
For those of you that have gotten this far, there is probably one nagging question left that has remained unanswered: if the whole idea was to make S.T.E.M. education affordable, how does a school pay for licenses for word processors, spreadsheets, slideshows, drawing tools, forms, and, especially, website development and administration? The answer is simple: free Google Technology.
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