I-Corps: The Planetary Laboratory: A networked platform for engaging K-12 STEM learning

这个创新团队（I-Corps）项目的重点是一个教育平台，可用于制作STEM教育材料。行星实验室是一个桌面/移动的网站，帮助研究实验室和非正式学习机构，如博物馆和动物园，向广大受众提供引人入胜的教育项目。这些组织通常具有教育使命和特殊的教育价值，因为它们将学生直接与尖端的STEM研究和创新联系起来。然而，这些组织的影响力往往有限，因为课程分配是次要的优先事项。他们制作的课程和资源“孤立”在个别网站上，可能无法接触到广泛的受众。行星实验室是一个具有成本效益的方式，组织生产和分发的内容，是符合国家教育标准的正式教学和服从校外学习。这将帮助组织满足他们的“更广泛的影响”目标，提高他们获得资金的能力，并让更多的学生接触到可能比传统的基于教科书的课程更有效的STEM教育材料。行星实验室将运营一个在线学习管理系统（LMS），该系统策划和托管来自多个组织的教育内容。LMS将以符合国家教育标准的方式呈现这些内容，并使教师和学生（特别是K12）易于使用。每一个学习挑战（一套多媒体材料，将引导学生通过一个特定主题的内容）将连接用户与组织网络，产生相关的课程。通过将各组织的相关课程和项目联系起来，该小组将建立更大的学生/教师和学习材料网络，从而扩大每个组织的覆盖面。可以组织内容以涵盖不同类型的标准（例如，下一代科学标准，共同核心）跨主题领域和年级。 行星实验室将利用组织的内容为学生创建更好的STEM教育计划。它将把STEM学习与其他教育目标联系起来，特别是识字、社交和情感学习。学校在不同类型的学习之间设置的障碍（例如，数学课教数学;阅读课教识字）并不存在于真实的世界中。行星实验室将帮助教师打破这些障碍，让学生更好地了解如何提高他们的识字能力，或知道如何管理他们的同伴关系，与科学探究和STEM职业有关。这也将有助于在更早的年龄教授更多的科学--科学教育往往直到中学才被强调，尽管它是相关的，而且可以更早地教授。

This Innovation Corps (I-Corps) project focuses on an educational platform that can be used to produce materials for STEM education.The Planetary Laboratory is a desktop/mobile website that helps research labs and informal learning institutions like museums and zoos deliver engaging education programs to large audiences. Such organizations typically have educational mandates and special educational value because they connect students directly to cutting edge STEM research and innovations. However, these organizations often have limited reach because curriculum distribution is a secondary priority. The curricula and resources they produce are "siloed" on individual websites and may not reach a broad audience. The Planetary Laboratory is a cost effective way for organizations to produce and distribute content that is aligned with national education standards for formal instruction and amenable to out of school learning. This will help organizations satisfy their 'broader impacts' goals, improve their ability to secure funding, and expose more students to STEM education materials that may be more effective than traditional text book based lessons.The Planetary Laboratory will operate an online learning management system (LMS) that curates and hosts educational content from multiple organizations. The LMS will present this content in a way that aligns with national education standards and makes it easy for teachers and students (K12 in particular) to use. Each learning challenge (a set of multimedia materials that will guide the student through content on a specific topic) will connect users with a network of organizations that produce relevant curriculum. By linking related curricula and projects across organizations, this team will build larger networks of students/teachers and learning materials, which improves the reach of each individual organization. Content can be organized to cover different types of standards (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards, Common Core) across topic areas and grades. The Planetary Laboratory will use organizations' content to create better STEM education programs for students. It will connect STEM learning with other educational goals, particularly literacy and social and emotional learning. The barriers that schools put between different types of learning (e.g., math class teaches math; reading class teaches literacy) do not exist in the real world. The Planetary Laboratory will help teachers break down these barriers and give students a better sense of how improving their literacy, or knowing how to manage their peer relationships, is relevant to scientific enquiry and STEM careers. It will also help teach more science at earlier ages - science education is often not emphasized until middle school even though it is relevant and teachable far sooner.