STEAM Power

Infusing Art Into Your STEM Curriculum

Tim Needles

• Publisher: International Society for Technology in Education
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781564848192
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Technology

Artist and educator Tim Needles brings a fresh approach to STEAM topics, focusing on creativity, innovation and collaboration. There are numerous books on STEAM, but most are either arts and crafts project books designed for children or high-level books that can be weighty and inaccessible for new teachers. This accessible and engaging book offers creative ideas for blending arts and STEM learning (STEAM). It covers the fundamentals of STEAM, with project ideas and best practices, while providing insight from educators in the field.Technologies covered include: coding, robotics, 3D printing, virtual and augmented reality, photography, video, animation and digital drawing. In addition, the book addresses several different approaches to bringing STEAM learning to the next level, such as collaboration, global learning, project-based learning, makerspaces and social-emotional learning.The book:

• Features a breadth of technology and project possibilities, with project ideas organized by technology type.
• Explores long-standing concepts that are relevant regardless of specific advances in technology, providing the pedagogy behind the projects rather than technology for technology's sake.
• Offers a highly visual approach, incorporating photographs and hand-drawn sketchnotes.
• Illustrates concepts through author examples as well as a series of interviews featuring STEAM professionals and expert teachers.
• Presents topics in a clear, concise manner that's useful for repeated reading and as a practical resource.

With its friendly style and visual design, the book is a practical guide for new and emerging educators, and for educators looking for fun and creative ways to invigorate their STEAM curriculum. Audience: K-12 educators

PART I

STEAM Fundamentals

Let’s begin by discussing the philosophical concepts and tools that are important to developing a successful STEAM learning environment. The way we frame our STEAM learning can make a huge impact on how we learn. In this section, we will discuss how to lay the groundwork to facilitate great STEAM projects, from approaching the work with the appropriate mindset to using the creative process to boost innovation, as well as how to set the tone with the learning environment.

CHAPTER 1

The STEAM Mindset

Harnessing our own creativity offers a new perspective on the world around us. In the world of education, the impact is limitless.

Creativity

I often hear both students and adults say, “I’m not creative.” That fixed mindset isn’t just prevalent but also contagious. As someone well-versed in creativity, I always try to challenge that idea and help people develop and strengthen their creative skill set.

If you think about the term “creativity,” it’s hard to clearly define and can be even more difficult to assess. For our educational purposes, we’ll define creativity as bringing a new, unique, and valuable approach to making something or solving a problem.

As an artist, I am very in touch with my ability to be creative because it’s a skill I’ve learned to harness and focus over the years. I often challenge students to produce creative results using the same creativity exercises that have helped me, including making a sculpture with nonart materials, drawing a blind contour (without looking at the paper), or photographing a self-portrait without incorporating their face.

When other educators ask me how they can add more creativity into their teaching, I’ll respond with a counterintuitive reply: I suggest they add more limitations. This is one of the easiest ways to inspire creativity, and it can be done in any learning environment. I find that limiting materials and obvious solutions forces my students to find more creative solutions. The same principle of imposing limitations can be used in any of the STEAM disciplines—for example, in projects such as using popsicle sticks to engineer a bridge that can support a heavy weight or estimating the number of windows in a school based on the number in one classroom. This limitation-based approach models challenges that occur in real-world STEAM scenarios, such as how do we build a space station on Mars using only available resources, or what can fit on a spaceship? The idea is simple, but it’s an effective way to get learners thinking in new ways. The projects featured in this book all have great potential for bringing out creativity, some through limitations and others through process and design. When you see students making creative choices, point them out to inspire others.

ADMINISTRATOR’S ANGLE

Mark Gura

Any activity in any subject may foster a degree of student creativity. But for activities to nourish and grow student creativity predictably and for all students, teachers have to plan to produce that outcome. Simply assigning an activity that seems “creative” will not likely produce that result—and that includes arts activities. But well-planned music and visual art, for instance, may engage students in doing things that will result in learning things other than creativity: technique, arts appreciation, art history, and response to art, to name a few.

Art

Creativity is closely related to art, but what is art? This is a necessary question to tackle before proceeding because we don’t want to move forward without addressing preconceived ideas that might limit the potential impact of our STEAM learning.

I find many people first associate art with drawing, but it is much more than that. Art comprises a wide variety of disciplines, but at its core are creative expression and communication. As an artist, I love exploring all its facets, from drawing and painting to theater, music, dance, and design. The definition of art has continued to evolve and expand, but whether it’s sharing conceptual ideas, documenting history, or skillful decorating by means of sound, images, words, or movement, it’s often all about feeling. Art allows for interaction, and like a language, it can communicate and connect ideas.

The writer and philosopher Elbert Hubbard said in his book Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers, “Art is not a thing—it is a way.” This may give some insight as to why art pairs well with STEM.

PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Sophia Georgiou

It’s hard to imagine having STEM without the A in it. I think creative thinking is needed in all of these fields, and they’re all equally important and interconnect with each other.

Failure

We often fear and avoid failure. This is understandable because failing has a host of negative associations and might bring forth bad feelings and shame. But we learn more through failure than we do through success. This is especially important when it comes to STEAM learning because it deals with difficult questions without easy solutions. To innovate and be creative, failure needs to be embraced. To promote creativity, we need to model and share how failing is a part of the process.

We all fail, but not everyone likes to admit their mistakes and even fewer people are open to sharing them. The problem is that avoiding failure means avoiding progress: it keeps us in a safe and familiar area but at a cost. Some people may judge you for your failure and hold it against you, but to move forward sometimes it’s necessary to be brave and put your work out there anyway. If we own and accept our failures and share them as a teaching tool to connect with others, we can rise above any negativity. Remember, no one can make you feel bad unless you allow them. Early in my career, I was averse to failure, and it insulated me from growth. I was asking students to take risks and learn from failure and share their process, but I was holding back; later, I made a choice to be more authentic and practice what I preach in its entirety. How can we ask students to embrace and learn from their failures if we don’t model it first? We all have fears and we learn from facing them; it’s empowering to take them on and learn to persist through failure.

Curiosity

A core element of the STEAM mindset is being aware of your curiosity and encouraging it in others. Have you ever been going through your day and found yourself wondering about something that you’ve come across? We all have those moments, and they can be terrific ways to develop new STEAM lessons. It’s important to take note of the questions that come up in class, as well as the random curious notions that arise during your day, because they can lead to terrific learning. Questions are a great place to begin a project, especially if you can’t find the answers with a simple internet search.

Even seemingly trivial questions can develop into interesting STEAM projects. As an example, I was in the shower shampooing my hair when I had the thought:

How does shampoo work? I know it’s soap, but why are some shampoos more expensive or more effective? What’s the science behind it?

I tried a quick search on the internet and read how detergent molecules bind with the natural oils in our hair. I realized that this might make an interesting question to pose to my students. It’s focused on something we all do, generally without thinking too much about it, and it contains an intriguing element of science. If we include the design of a shampoo bottle, the lesson also includes math, art, engineering, and technology. A question such as this can inspire learners to reconsider a part of their daily life, which helps the information to stick.

The framing and implementation of this kind of question will make a big impact on whether it’s a success or failure. It’s not enough to bring in an interesting question; it’s all about the audience and their interests or curiosities. This is why giving students an element of choice is always beneficial for both the educator and the students. I find sharing my curiosity and the process I take for inquiring about the answers is a great way to inspire learners to be curious and develop questions of their own.

Fun

Fun is one of the best tools that teachers have in their arsenal. Think back to a time that you were learning something and having fun. It may not have been in school, but it’s likely that those memories are positive and that you can recall the learning in detail. Don’t be afraid of having fun. It sounds like a strange statement to put out there, but I have found a few educators resistant to fun learning out of fear that it might devalue the learning. I’ve also found some educators fear that they’ll be judged if they incorporate fun activities into learning, but have faith that good administrators know when they see impactful, engaging teaching. It’s okay to be serious as an educator, but it’s also okay to give yourself permission to make learning fun.

Never underestimate the impact fun has on students, especially in a classroom environment. Having fun also frees students up to take creative risks and try something new. STEAM can be a terrific hook to make learning more engaging and memorable. When the learning is fun, the information sticks because it is associated with a positive moment. That makes it more meaningful, so therefore it becomes more ingrained.

Figure 1.1 Here are a few elements that make for a fun STEAM lesson:

We’ve established that fun is a great teaching tool, but what’s the next step? A key is knowing your audience, because what may seem fun and exciting for one group doesn’t necessarily translate to another. Fun, like humor, can be subjective, so it’s essential to know and feel out the group you’re working with. I understand that some educators might be hesitant or inexperienced in this arena, so let’s look at the elements that help make a fun project.

Design

We are surrounded by design every day—from the clothes we wear to the spaces we occupy—so even if we’re not aware of it, we all have extensive experience in the subject. This is why design is such an important and impactful element of art to incorporate into STEAM learning. Design offers a way to bring a creative aspect of art into any lesson or project and add problem-solving, innovation, and hands-on making, which can be educationally transformative. When working with design in STEAM projects, it helps to know and incorporate the basic elements and principles of design to make the work more functional and successful. These include elements such as line, shape, direction, balance, and proportion, which also relate to math and can help students in every type of making. In the Resources section at the end of this book, I’ve included descriptions of all the elements and principles of design as well as some tools that I use to teach them. In teaching art, I always point out that it is okay to break the rules as you see fit, but it helps to know and comprehend those rules and principles first.

PROFESSIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Lloyd Nelson

I’m an engineer and an artist, so to me there’s the creativity part and the vision part. Architects are people who are strong on the engineering side, but they’re not engineers; they’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About ISTE
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Contributor Biographies
• Contents
• Introduction
• PART I: STEAM FUNDAMENTALS
• PART II: STEAM PROJECTS AND TECHNOLOGIES
• PART III: NEXT LEVEL STEAM LEARNING
• PART IV: THE STEAM CHALLENGE
• STEAM Power Project Resources
• ISTE Standards Project Mapping Guide
• References
• Index
• Back Cover