I was an Industrial Technology teacher for 35 years. Many, perhaps MOST of the original STEM activities were developed by leaders in Industrial Technology classrooms. We used to teach workshops on how to inspire students pursue careers in those good blue collar areas. Now that STEM has become big business big companies that market to the educational "machine" have created "packaged" programs to sell to districts wishing to have a STEM program.
Regrettably, schools have shutdown the Industrial Technology programs that actually created the STEM concept. Now, fueled by the educational materials business, too many STEM programs have morphed away from the truly creative, open ended activity based programs, to "canned" activities where all of the outcomes are known before the activity really begins. Thus, students are once again, cheated out of the true learning the comes with the "...we'll learn more by wandering than searching..." type of activites.
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