Ms. Venosa's STEM Blog

     'Tis the season for final assignments and preparing for exams! As we wrap up our course, I am encouraged to reflect on the key takeaways from this semester. As someone who is in the Physical Education stream, I have not had direct exposure to STEM subject fields; however, one of the things I have come to realize is that there are traces of STEM within every subject. This course has allowed me to understand the various tools that I can incorporate in a classroom to allow students exposure to STEM-based learning.       Using all the knowledge we have learned over the course of the semester, we were able to put those pedagogies into action by facilitating a STEM activity for the class. The past two weeks of activities have been an eye-opening experience, as it has allowed me to witness various teaching methods in realistic scenarios. Every group was able to show their own ways of how they would teach a STEM lesson. Many of my fellow classmates are in courses specific to the STEM

    The incorporation of technology in the classroom has become more prevalent in the past 20 years. When I reflect on my own schooling experience, the presence of technology from when I entered the school system 17 years ago has changed immensely up until today. One of the main things I found interesting from this section was the fact that technology does not always refer to digital technology - there are various forms of technology. The quotation,  "...technology is about more than objects and tools; it refers to the ideas, practices, artifacts, and sensibilities that define a culture" (Davis et, al., 2019), really emphasizes how technology is represented in different forms. Without even realizing it, technology has been present in the classrooms; however, it has taken a turn to be present in a more digital way. As a teacher, it will be important to understand the different forms of technology and how to incorporate technology in an appropriate manner. One of the main takea

    The transition from focusing on a mathematics lens to focusing on a scientific lens has opened up brand new ways of higher level thinking in regard to STEM courses. Starting off with the fractals activity, I was trying to understand how it related to the sciences and struggled to find the answer myself. However, the answer was more abstract than I thought; the fractals represent our knowledge and various dimensions. Each level of the fractal represents the next step of our knowledge and it is continuous to symbolize how our knowledge continuously expands. This represents how each branch of STEM that we focus on, unravels a new pathway to higher level thinking.      One of the main things that stood out to me is the emphasis on student-driven learning throughout this topic. I love the idea of teachers being a guide but the students are the ones to decide where they want to go with it. Inevitably, this idea increases student engagement because students are able to direct their learni