I FOUNDED A PROGRAM TO MODERNIZE AND DEMOCRATIZE K-12 STEM
Affordable inquiry and project-based activities aligned to the standards and mirror real-world STEM careers
Hacking STEM is designed for students in grades 5-8 and seamlessly guides learners from analog to digital to data explorations, offering hands-on activities that mirror real-world STEM careers. Today, a rich repository of 23 free, ready-to-use lesson plans developed in collaboration with esteemed partners like NASA and BBC Learning are available. Educators and students in over 200 countries use Hacking STEM. The global impact has been fueled by partnerships with worldwide educational leaders like UNESCO, facilitating professional development programs and hackathons that bolster 21st-century teaching skills. A notable offshoot of this initiative, the Excel Data Streamer Add-In, has garnered over a million active users monthly, signaling its widespread acceptance and utility in the classroom.
Empowering educators with 21st-century lesson plans that use data to support inquiry.
ENGAGING WITH DATA THAT TELLS A STORY
SAMPLE SOME HACKING STEM LESSONS
Build models to understand and mitigate brain injury
Analyze astronauts’ photos of Earth to predict climate change
Build models to understand and mitigate brain injury
Students learn about the regions of the brain and their function. Then, they build a model to visualize in real time what happens when the brain collides with the skull.
Explore how deep the ocean is
Analyze astronauts’ photos of Earth to predict climate change
Build models to understand and mitigate brain injury
Students explore remote terrains by modeling and graphing the ocean floor with an ultrasonic sensor to visualize organisms that live in different ocean layers.
Use computational thinking to understand earthquakes
Analyze astronauts’ photos of Earth to predict climate change
Analyze astronauts’ photos of Earth to predict climate change
Students build a seismograph to visualize earthquake data and explore modern engineering techniques used to mitigate earthquake damage. Then, they engage in an Excel big data activity to understand plate tectonics.
Analyze astronauts’ photos of Earth to predict climate change
Analyze astronauts’ photos of Earth to predict climate change
Analyze astronauts’ photos of Earth to predict climate change
Students learn the hexadecimal numbering system to develop an understanding of how computers represent color. Next, they work with photographs taken from the International Space Station and satellites to model seasonal color changes in a biome.