STEAM-powered computing education

Introduction

STEAM stands for STEM + Arts. According to Kylie Peppler (2013:38) “Incorporating novel, cross-disciplinary technologies such as e-textiles in computing education [STEAM] can broaden participation, particularly by women, and improve learning outcomes.”. “Taken together, emerging tools, materials, practices, and products at the intersection of the arts and the STEM disciplines could revolutionize computing education as well as have rippling impacts within each of these fields.” (p. 43)

According to the Stem to STEAM website (10/2013), “[...] innovation remains tightly coupled with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math – the STEM subjects. Art + Design are poised to transform our economy in the 21st century just as science and technology did in the last century. We need to add Art + Design to the equation — to transform STEM into STEAM.”

John Maeda (2013) argues that “Science, Technology, Engineering and Math – the STEM subjects – alone will not lead to the kind of breathtaking innovation the 21st century demands. Innovation happens when convergent thinkers, who march straight ahead towards their goal, combine forces with divergent thinkers – those who professionally wander, who are comfortable being uncomfortable, and who look for what is real.”

Principles

Drawing from their experience with e-textiles, Peppler (2013) have developed a series of eight guiding principles of STEAM-powered computing education:

1. Choose open-ended, personal, and aesthetic tools and materials
2. Make design thinking central
3. Create authentic combinations of STEM and the arts
4. Facilitate easy-entry, but challenging, designs
5. Purposefully contrast multiple media, tools, and materials
6. Involve a range of disciplinary experts
7. Devise new assessments, pedagogy, and learning environments
8. Document and showcase work

Links

Organizations

• http://stemtosteam.org/

• The Steam Journal, is a transdisciplinary, theory-practice, peer-reviewed, open access, online journal with a focus on the intersection of STEM and Art. The journal integrates perspectives from a variety of contexts and fields. (open access).

Teams, experiments

• Kylie A. Peppler's list in the dblp bibliogrphy.

• Nanovation studio

• Maharam STEAM fellows

Bibliography

• Peppler, Kylie, "STEAM-Powered Computing Education: Using E-Textiles to Integrate the Arts and STEM," Computer, vol. 46, no. 9, pp. 38-43, September, 2013, http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/co/2013/09/mco2013090038.html

• Peppler, Kylie; Diane Glosson, Yasmin Kafai, Deborah Fields, and Kristin Searle. 2011. Articulating creativity in a new domain: expert insights from the field of e-textiles. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM conference on Creativity and cognition (C&C '11). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 385-386. DOI=10.1145/2069618.2069708 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2069618.2069708

• Maeda, John (2013) "STEM + Art = STEAM," The STEAM Journal: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 34. Available at: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/steam/vol1/iss1/34

• Kafai, Yasmin B.; Kylie A. Peppler, Quinn Burke, Michael Moore, Diane Glosson: Fröbel's forgotten gift: textile construction kits as pathways into play, design and computation. IDC 2010: 214-217