Educator tries virtual reality in Iowa STEM Teacher Externship

Externship helps STEM teacher tie real-world concepts to ‘virtual’ careers

Design Mill, Inc. in Dubuque provides an emergent line of work, creating virtual reality experiences of warehouses for industrial clients to use in real estate or for employee training purposes. Like most STEM careers in Iowa, new ones like this crop up almost every day.

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Assumption High School students experiencing virtual reality made possible by the STEM Best award.

Iowa STEM BEST Partner brings STEM reality to the classroom

“It’s making learning real.”

This is how Wendy Martin, a science teacher at Assumption High School in Davenport, talks about how her school’s STEM BEST partnership with VictoryVR, a Quad Cities technology company, is changing the way students learn about STEM careers.

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Legislature processing computer science bill

Programming enthusiasts are watching the Iowa legislature, hoping they boot up a Computer Science bill (SF274) this session, but it will come down to a binary up or down before long.

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Highland Elementary students coding in Waterloo

Iowa STEM amped up on Java and other computer science tools

Generation Z is type-cast as technology native—born with iPads in their cribs, raised with smartphones clutched in their grip, educated on digital global blackboards and bathed in WiFi waves connecting their cars, TVs and toasters. They’re accomplished consumers of technology. But how many could design an app, troubleshoot a software bug or critique the pros and cons of crowdsourcing?

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Grant Wood Elementary School receives Code Iowa Technology Award

Thousands learn to program through Code Iowa

The room is eerily quiet. Students’ eyes are glued to their computers, geared up with headphones and a mouse to take on the challenge. Suddenly, a young girl’s hands go up in the air as she yells, “Yes! I did it!”

That’s the “Hour of Code.”

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Lincoln Elementary School coding girls

Iowa STEM moves with Intel i7 speed on computer science

The Computer Science (CS) Working Group of the STEM Council is micro-processing at 4 GHz on a number of levels to realize our state’s leadership expectations in CS.

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Lt. Governor Reynolds speaks at Jordan Creek Elementary School

Iowans take a big “byte” of coding

Early December’s celebration of computer science in Iowa worked to inspire thousands of students across the state to try a “byte” of the computer programming world.

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Davenport West High School utilizes Project Lead The Way's Computer Science program

Computer science gets Scaled-Up by Iowa STEM

With Computer Science Education Week right around the corner, the “T” in STEM is in the spotlight once more through Code.org and the STEM Council’s “Code Iowa” partnership. This year, the new Computer Science and Software Engineering course by Project Lead The Way helps support these IT efforts in Iowa.

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Howard-Winneshiek Community School District students particpate in ST Math, Scale-Up program

Using the “T” to teach the “M” — ST Math scales across Iowa

It is not your typical kindergarten classroom. Although full of the boundless energy of youth, the room is so quiet you would hear a pin drop. Every child is seated, eyes glued to their iPads, headphones on, some smiling and some intently focused on reaching the next level in a game called, ST (Spatial-Temporal) Math.

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