Design what’s possible with STEM Studio

Joost Allard March 15, 2021July 17, 2023Learning Experience, PBL, STEM, STEM Studio

Design what's possible with STEM Studio

Welcome to STEM Studio, a place where your creativity and passion for education is unleashed!

We believe that each student is capable of greatness and has the potential to become a hero in their own journey. However, those opportunities aren’t easy to create, especially when you’re trying to work alone. STEM Studio provides the space and support to plot out a challenging learning experience that elevates students’ voices, extends well beyond the classroom, and can run with the support of peers, partners, and Learn Deep. Join us to create the kind of challenge you’ve always wanted to offer your students.

This is your chance to build connections, see new possibilities, and get a good chunk of unit planning done at the same time. You could call it ‘PD’, but its really more like remembering why you wanted to teach in the first place and doing something about it.

What would you like to build this summer?

Every summer we host teachers for a multi-day Design Studio.

Together we’ll collaborate to craft a Challenge Framework based on Learn Deep’s Model for Community Engaged Project-Based Learning that can guide you and your students through an extended project journey.

This summer we are offering 5 opportunities to try your hand at collaborating on designs you will be able to use in the 2023-24 school year (Click the links to learn more):

Redesign of learning spaces in our schools.
Youth exploring Mental Health challenges related to the learning environment.
Water quality and equitable access in our communities.
MKE Skates, an exploration of unused properties in the city to place popup skate parks.
Open Studio, an opportunity to explore your own idea for a Community Engaged project.

Scholarships Now Available!

Through a generous donation, we have a limited number of scholarships available for STEM Studio design workshops. Use promo code SS2023 when you register.

Our Summer 2023 Schedule

Week 1	Mornings 9:00 am – noon	Afternoons 1:30 pm to 4:30 pm
Monday, July 24	Youth Mental Health	Learning Space Redesign
Tuesday, July 25	Youth Mental Health	Learning Space Redesign
Wednesday, July 26	Water Quality and Equity	MKE Skates
Thursday, July 27	Water Quality and Equity	MKE Skates
Friday, July 28	Open Studio	Open Studio

Week 2	Mornings 9:00 am – noon	Afternoons 1:30 am – 4:30 pm
Monday, July 31	Youth Mental Health	Learning Space Redesign
Tuesday, August 1	Youth Mental Health	Learning Space Redesign
Wednesday, August 2	Water Quality and Equity	MKE Skates
Thursday, August 3	Water Quality and Equity	MKE Skates

Friday, August 4	11:00 am – 1:00 pm Project Showcase

Location

We’ll be working together on the campus of MSOE in downtown Milwaukee.

Our STEM Studio sessions are hosted downtown at MSOE’s WE Energies STEM Center in the Northwestern Mutual sponsored lab room.

What we’ll develop

Over the course of STEM Studio sessions, we’ll work together to develop a Program Guide and framework for the project at hand that detail:

Key project events (kick-off, review, showcase)
Field experiences participating schools might leverage to inform and support the work of students and teachers engaged in the project
Community partners available to support the work of students and teachers
On-going support/coaching for participating teachers
Artifacts students will produce as part of the effort
Where and how project activities connect back to curriculum standards

We cap the sessions with a chance to show off your work to peers, school leaders and (prospective) community partners on Friday August 4th.

Interested in joining?

Follow the links above for details and registration information for each of the sessions.

If you are already a member of inspirEd, you will have the option to sign up for STEM Studio 2023 and finalize your registration there as well.

I can’t make the scheduled STEM Studio this summer.

We understand that summer plans get in the way of participating in the studio. However, if you are inspired by the challenge themes and where what we’re working on might lead, you’ll still have a chance to participate when they kick off in the coming school year. You’ll have the benefit of working with a finished Program Guide and related materials.

Let us know what sparks your interest and well keep you posted as we finalize plans and get ready to launch.

STEM Studio

Pete Reynolds Blog February 27, 2020August 25, 2020Caravela IoT, Green Infrastructure, Northwestern Mutual, Reflo, STEM Studio, Sweetwater

Last spring, with funding from Northwestern Mutual, we conducted interviews with teachers and mentors involved with MPS’s efforts to introduce Project GUTS, SHARP Literacy’s Design Through Code (DTC) program, TEALS, and First Robotics. The goal was to understand how we might expand opportunities to develop computational thinking outside of computer science classes, by listening to what drew teachers and mentors already engaged in that type of activity to take on the task. We provided a recap of that work here.

One of the ideas that came out of that effort was to work with teams of teachers and expertise from the broader community to create and pilot real world projects that provide solid opportunities to engage students in computational thinking. We call that the STEM Studio, and are happy to report that Northwestern Mutual has provided funding to design and pilot the first projects with MPS.

Since environmental science is a spring semester focus for MPS middle schools, we used our November Collab Lab on Green Infrastructure to generate ideas for potential projects. One of those is the Southeastern Wisconsin Watershed’s Trust’s (Sweetwater) Adopt a Storm Drain Program. As we talked about what that might look like as a STEM Studio project, Sweetwater pointed us to the Smart City Reverse RFP offered by Caravela IoT. That initiative seeks to demonstrate the potential to leverage a network of sensors that detect environmental data. Winning submissions would receive both equipment and technical support to pilot a project. We partnered with MPS, Sweetwater and Reflo to put in a joint proposal which uses STEM Studio pilot projects to both deploy sensors and expose students to the technology. We were selected as one of the winners and are happy to now have Caravela IoT engaged with us in the STEM Studio effort.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be pulling our teams of teachers together with community partners to design and pilot the experiences we want students to have as they take on the STEM Studio projects. Collab Lab attendees will know that one of our criteria for projects we get involved in is the ability to scale across schools with network effects. As part of the STEM Studio pilots, we’ll work with the teams to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and what the next cohort of teachers will want to have in place to take on or extend the challenge in their schools.

Design what’s possible with STEM Studio