Siemens STEM Day Offers 3D Printing and STEM Education Lessons for Teachers and Students

January 4, 2018 by Sarah Saunders 3D Printing Education

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With operations spread over nearly 200 countries, global company Siemens provides automation, digitalization, and electrification products. The company, which won an award from ASME this year for its 3D printed gas turbine blades, also has a foundation, which focuses on philanthropic efforts in order to continue the advancement of STEM-related education and workforce development.

To date, the Siemens Foundation has invested over $100 million in the US for this cause. Inspired by the culture of innovation and learning at Siemens’ companies around the world, the foundation’s programs help narrow the opportunity gap for young students in STEM programs to go into related careers, as well as sustaining, and sometimes even starting, STEM learning for today’s workforce.

Together with Discovery Education, the Siemens Foundation has re-branded the annual Siemens Science Day, and turned it into a program for more modern educational opportunities: Siemens STEM Day. The new program, which is an opportunity for US schools to promote STEM activities for both students and teachers, is now meant for all students in grades K-12, and offers multiple tools and resources to recharge STEM curriculum.

Before you start looking at the calendar, you should know that Siemens STEM Day doesn’t actually happen on one specific day; rather, it’s a promotion by the organizations of constantly available STEM lessons and hands-on activities for students, along with a teacher support center.

The collection of STEM Day activities and resources includes five brand new lessons for students in grades 9-12, bringing the total number of high school lessons up to 15. The new offerings include a 3D Printing Robots lesson, where students can investigate the application of 3D printing in terms of space technology, and a lesson on 3D design. Additionally, a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) lesson teaches high school students how to investigate and classify different types of AI in order to form a protocol for the Turing Test, and the last two new lessons cover coding and cybersecurity.

Rocket Launcher at Dayton’s Mini Maker Faire [Image: Sarah Saunders]

STEM Day lessons and projects for kids in grades 6-8 include designing a spectroscope, producing chemical reactions with yeast, making a weather station, and learning how different variables can affect the distance traveled by a stomp rocket. Students in grades K-5 can enjoy STEM activities with over 100 different lessons, which run the gamut from projects about erosion and fossils, elasticity, and craters to climate history and solar power.

Teachers can visit the STEM Day online educator support center to find tools that can help them plan a foolproof STEM lesson, along with 20 quick, thematic refreshers so they remember the basic information about the topics they plan to cover in class.

The website reads, “Our goal is to take the guess work out of finding low cost, high-engagement activities that will fit easily into a 45 minute – 1 hour lesson.”

Last but not least, Siemens STEM Day is offering a Possibility Grant Sweepstakes, which eligible educators can enter every day from now until 5 PM EST April 27, 2018, for the chance to win $10,000 that can be used to purchase STEM resources for their schools. Around May 4, a random drawing will take place, and one school will be chosen as the grand prize winner. The Possibility Grant Sweepstakes is only available for teachers who work for a 501(c)(3) school; you can visit the Siemens STEM Day website for official rules.

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[Source: The Journal]