Maker & STEM

Our nation’s continued economic prosperity is closely linked with student success in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Use these resources to explore the critical role STEM education plays in driving innovation, and how schools and districts can expand the capacity and diversity of tomorrow’s STEM workforce.

All Maker & STEM toolkit files

A zip file containing all of the downloadable Maker & STEM toolkit resources

ZIP

Afterschool Maker Spaces

Learn how to start an afterschool Maker space in your school

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Funding School Maker Spaces

Familiarize yourself with the funding options and resources that can bring “Making” to your school

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Make and Take

Discover what it takes to create projects made of affordable materials that children can bring home

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Making the Case for Making

Use this resource to share with peers, parents and administrators

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Steps to Creating an Amazing Make Space

Discover the simple steps to organizing and implementing a Maker Space

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The Maker Space Library

Learn the techniques for getting a Maker mindset going in your school, starting with the school library

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What is Design Thinking?

Learn more about the Design Thinking process and how it helps in questioning a problem, assumptions, and overall implications by re-framing the issue in fresh new ways

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What Makes a Maker Space?

Discover the basic elements for a successful Maker curriculum

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Maker Resources

See the wide-range of simple resources available to students and teachers

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Enhancing NGSS Through Makerspaces

Cross-reference the Science and Engineering Practices with the Makerspace Movement to maximize hands-on learning.

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Evaluating the Success of Your Makerspaces

Learn what makes a successful makerspace and how that success can be measured

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Reality Bytes: Virtual Reality and K-12 Education

Virtual Reality immerses students in rich worlds to free learning from the confines of a screen.

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	Cracking the Code to STEM with Arduino When teacher Casey Korder won an Arduino kit from Intel Education, it helped his school's STEM program to flourish.
	The HP Sprout: Helping STEM to Take Root in Schools We gave one lucky winner an HP Sprout in one of our giveaways. See how she is incorporating the device into STEM lessons for her students.
	Rethinking the Library Media Center Four library media specialists share stories about transforming libraries into next-generation resource centers that students and teachers love to visit.
	Dell Chromebooks and Classrooms: A Winning Combination See for yourself how today’s teachers are using Intel-based Chromebooks to bring 21st Century learning to their students.
	Math is One of Many Stars at Walter Payton Prep Math teams and contests, exciting electives, collaborative problem solving, and a culture of experimentation and exploration make this Chicago Magnet School a very special place.
	Narrowing the Divide and Nurturing Tech Experts in Sterling Morton Schools 96 percent of students at the Chicago-area Morton 201 High School District qualify for free or reduced-price lunch but that didn’t stop the district leadership from finding ways to get Dell laptops into students’ hands for one-to-one use.
	1:1 Laptops Set the Stage for District-Wide Innovation Twelve years ago, Roanoke County Public Schools (RCPS) in Virginia handed out Dell laptops to the ninth-grade students at its new high school and students attending the Engineering Academy. Today, all 5,000 high school students and 1,400 teachers in the district are part of the Dell Latitude 1:1 program.

	Enhancing Sharing in Simple and Meaningful New Ways Ed-tech company Clarity Innovations worked with the Math Learning Center to create a dynamic new way to share math learning with teachers and peers.	Blog
	Reflections on Tech Use with Young Children If technology isn't "good enough" for the children of the Silicon Valley innovators who created it, how can we defend its use in schools, especially with young children?	Blog
	Augmented Vs. Virtual Reality: Which Will Transform Education? Numerous studies have shown the strengths of both virtual and augmented reality use in the classroom. But which is the best fit for today's schools?	Blog
	Using Visual Models to Spark Mathematical Discussion When I reviewed my students’ work, I noticed that only one drew a picture of their solution strategy. The rest lacked a visual context for making sense of the problem.	Blog
	Top Science Education Take-Aways from NSTA18 The National Science Teachers’ Association (NSTA) Annual Conference was an enormous success this year. Here are my main takeaways.	Blog
	STEMming the Tide: STEM Tools for All Levels of Education Utilizing hands-on curriculum is the key to inspiring our children to pursue STEM-related fields. It is vital that these lesson plans be engaging and accessible to all students.	Useful links
	Reality Bytes: Virtual Reality and K-12 Education Making learning more personalized, more relevant, and more immersive have always been the moving goal-posts of education. Digital media has helped create infinite opportunities in terms of access to dynamic content, but it’s still, for the most part, an extension of traditional learning: groups of students watching and absorbing static information with minimal interaction.	Publication
	Making Progress: Evaluating the Success of Your Makerspaces Download the Evaluating the Success of Your Makerspaces resource from our Maker & STEM toolkit to learn what makes a successful makerspace and how that success can be measured.	News
	Five Things to Know about Design Thinking Design thinking is a pretty hot topic for teachers and for schools. David Jakes has invested five years learning design and shares his five key points to consider.	Blog
	Ed-volve or Ed-perish: The Science That Will Deliver the Future It’s not news that the evolution of education technologies and models of transformed learning are moving at the speed of sound.	Blog