Instilling the love of technology into students is becoming more and more difficult. Even though this generation of students use technology every day, there are a small number entering fields such as engineering. Most schools have mandatory science fairs, but if a student is not interested in science they will produce a cookie cutter project that required minimal thinking on their part. However, Frank Smith discusses in his article, "STEM Students Blast Off in NASA Launch Event" an interesting program designed to get students interested in science related fields. STEM also known as, "Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics" hosts events that get students to use knowledge from these fields to build and create amazing technology. His article discusses an event where students from middle school all the way up to college had to build rockets that could do various things. In the MAV (Mini Mars Ascent Vehicle) contest, competitors had to create AGSE which is autonomous ground support equipment. This equipment had to be able to pick up a payload and launch it 3,000 feet into the air by a rocket. Winners could win $50,000.
Challenging students to build amazing rockets is one way that STEM promotes the love of science. Of course most schools cannot afford to do things as extravagant as these, but with a little creativity, teachers can think of interesting ways to teach. Maybe adding some gamification would help. Or even turning the individual science fair projects into classroom projects and giving away prizes to the most original class science fair project. Doing this would allow students to collaborate with each other and learn to work together, which is important for future career success.
website used: http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2015/04/stem-students-blast-nasa-launch-event
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