Engineering Contests and STEM

STEM is clearly interdisciplinary. However, most students see its components - Science, Technology and Mathematics - as completely separate, independent subjects. The E in STEM - Engineering - is almost absent from our curriculum. Engineering Contests can correct these two problems while developing essential STEM skills and motivating students. Participants will be introduced to a collection of rich (but cheap!) design problems that can either be incorporated into a single class, a self-contained unit or a year-long interdisciplinary course - IDC 3O. Teaching materials to support the introduction of the course – course outline, worksheets, extra background information etc. will be provided.

Biography

Roberta has been teaching physics in Toronto for 25 years. She is rather fanatical about modern physics and Physics Education Research and spends her spare time looking for ways to combine them to make high school physics more exciting and inviting. She has given workshops to this end around special relativity, general relativity, particle physics quantum uncertainty and entanglement. She is a consultant for the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical and the coordinator of PI’s Teacher Network. In her spare spare time she plays New Orleans jazz at Grossman’s Tavern in Toronto.