Our mission is provide teachers innovative tools to aid students in the acquisition of core STEM knowledge and allow those students to apply that knowledge to real world situations through "thought, analysis, problem-solving, evaluation or creativity." In other words, Defined STEM wants to bring relevance to the classroom and demonstrates how math and science is used everyday in every subject, every class, and every career.
STEM is the need to focus on student's engagement and skills from the earliest grades in science, math, engineering and technology. The ultimate goal is to grow the proficiency level of students in sciences and mathematics and provide them with an understanding how those skills can be applied across all subjects and eventually careers.
Our flagship service, Defined STEM (www.definedstem.com), provides teachers a web-based resource designed to bring the science, technology, engineering and math initiatives to life. We accomplish this by providing project based learning STEM curriculum focused around a specific career theme. Our goal is that through the integration of the career based videos and performance tasks, students begin to understand and make connections between career pathways and the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed in school, careers and life.
A Connection is a self contained unit which helps the teacher demonstrate relevance to their students through real world applications centered around a central career theme and aligned to performance based activities and virtual lab simulations. Connections are the central starting point for Defined STEM's assets.
Performance Tasks are an alternative assessment that create a project-based environment for the classroom where students are tasked with solving a situation using a multi-disciplinary approach and producing end products that demonstrate his or her knowledge or skills.
"Literacy Tasks" apply the knowledge defined by the common core, and create a student activity around it to further develop reading and writing skills in a cross curricular fashion
When a student is provided a Literacy Task they will be instructed to create a product using their reading and writing skills; which, in turn will further the development of these skills.
Defined STEM offers Interactive, virtual-lab "simulations", supported by activities and online lesson plans, where students can participate in the scientific method. These labs are not games, instead they are in-depth interactives that provide an area where students can apply their skills and knowledge in a lab like environment and learn through trial and error.
