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

这个创新团队(i-Corps)项目专注于一个可用于制作STEM教育材料的教育平台。行星实验室是一个桌面/移动网站，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。这类组织通常具有教育使命和特殊的教育价值，因为它们直接将学生与尖端的STEM研究和创新联系起来。然而，这些组织的影响往往有限，因为课程分配是次要的。他们制作的课程和资源“孤立”在个别网站上，可能无法接触到广大受众。行星实验室是各组织制作和分发内容的一种具有成本效益的方式，这些内容符合正规教学的国家教育标准，并适合校外学习。这将帮助组织实现其更广泛的影响目标，提高他们获得资金的能力，并使更多的学生接触到可能比传统教科书课程更有效的STEM教育材料。行星实验室将运行一个在线学习管理系统(LMS)，该系统将管理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，并使其易于教师和学生(特别是K12)使用。每个学习挑战(一套多媒体材料，将指导学生通过特定主题的内容)将用户与编制相关课程的组织网络联系起来。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，从而提高每个组织的覆盖面。内容可以被组织为涵盖不同类型的标准(例如，下一代科学标准、共同核心)，跨越主题领域和等级。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，数学课教授数学；阅读课教授识字)在现实世界中并不存在。行星实验室将帮助教师打破这些障碍，让学生更好地了解提高他们的识字能力，或知道如何管理他们的同伴关系，是如何与科学探究和STEM职业相关的。这也将有助于在更早的年龄教授更多的科学--科学教育通常直到中学才被强调，尽管它是相关的，可以更早地传授。

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.