PBL in Schools

Hello, my name is Adeline Nordmoe, and I have been working for the STEM Hub for two semesters now. In that time, I have worked at the University Middle school or UMiddle helping with their Project Based Learning (PBL) program that they do on Fridays. Last semester, I mainly worked on PBL planning for the following school term. This involved weekly meetings with the curriculum director at the middle school to plan what the STEM components of each grade level projects would be. My coworkers and I helped with developing overarching questions that the students of each grade level could build their Individual projects from. We also brainstormed which of the Lending Library kits to use for the STEM component of the projects, and we ended up choosing Lego Mindstorms for the sixth grade, Vex Go robots for seventh grade, and Snap Circuits for eighth grade. So, after weeks of planning and practicing using the different kits, we began teaching students how to use them through workshops that we ran. This involved teaching students how to do some basic coding and an introducing them to basic circuits.

What I have learned from being a Stem Ambassador at UMiddle is how creative students can be when they have been taught a skill and then allowed to experiment and figure things out on their own. I was very impressed when I went to the sixth and seventh grade PBL exhibition, and I saw how the students integrated the Vex Robots into their projects. One student made an entire interactive underwater exploration simulation where the viewer could drive the “submarine” to collect different kinds of deep-sea fish just by using the light on the robot to guide them through a maze. This was a very creative application of the introduction that the STEM Ambassadors gave this student. Overall, I have enjoyed my role as STEM Ambassador at UMiddle and have found it to be very fulfilling because of the success of the students.