Curriculum Exchange: Middle School Students Go Beyond Blackboards to Solve the Grand Challenges

摘要

Our program offers an integrated approach to engaging middle school students in activities that improve awareness and understanding of a range of STEM college and career pathways. The program is framed within the Grand Challenges of the 21st Century identified by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). The focus of this paper is the curriculum used for our afterschool Innovation Clubs. The Innovation Clubs use the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robotics kits, augmented with other technical resources, to investigate solar and wind energy. We integrate additional hardware, such as solar panels, third-party sensors, and common construction materials, and teach ways to apply new software techniques as students evolve their programming skills. Overall, students are identifying and designing innovative engineering solutions to some of our world's most pressing problems. The curriculum includes the details of structured LEGO builds and specialized programming, curriculum design prompts, design challenge mats, and professional development documentation. This paper describes examples of the curriculum to give the reader a better understanding of the content, including detailed descriptions of the format of the structured builds. The goal of this paper is to disseminate to others the curriculum resources that were developed for this program.