Making Connections Between the Digital and Physical World
Thu, Oct 30, 2014 3:18 AM
Great Interactive Project for STEM Standards
This article is about using the popular children’s game, Angry Birds, to teach STEM concepts. This is an activity in which the students are building their own, real-life Angry Birds game. First, the students are integrating and analyzing interdisciplinary connections between almost all of the STEM disciplines. They are focusing on engineering principals in regards to trajectory, force, and projectile. Mathematically, they are working with angles, measurements, and numbers when keeping score. It uses an informal version of the scientific method and has data sheets for the students to record their findings. Technology is incorporated in having a social media student discussion afterwards. In addition to all of that, this entire activity is completely inquiry based. The students learn new vocabulary related to these topics, communicate effectively their ideas and findings, and analyze the STEM information they are gathering. They also have to engage in logical reasoning and critical thinking for this activity, along with applying STEM content to construct creative and innovative ideas. The students are also being encouraged to collaborate as a STEM team because this is a group activity that requires a lot of communication and making sense of others’ STEM-related ideas.
My only concern would be the level of complexity for the younger grade levels - because of the more technical aspects of it, I think it would be better suited for an older group than discussed in the article.