What is STEM SOS?

What is STEM Education?

STEM Education is the teaching and curriculum of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Stem emphasizes on todays technology and integrates subjects in certain ways that can help connect disciplines and connect them to one another rather than teaching each category individually. According to The National Science Teaching Association, "STEM education makes learning “real” and gives students opportunities to see the connection between the content they are studying and the application of that content in authentic and relevant ways."

Why is STEM Education Important?

STEM education is important to the because of the overwhelming increase in jobs pertaining to STEM as well as the interests levels in STEM. Furthermore, STEM education makes people more suited to meet the labor demands of the current workforce. The rigorous curriculum that STEM teaches enables students to be more active in participating in hands on activities. These activities give them the extra boosts or skills needed to find success in fields of work.

How Can STEM Education Shape the Future?

STEM education is vital to the future because, as society becomes more and more technology oriented, the skills needed to design, create, and innovate new things are becoming increasingly required for our success. The need for people learning about these concepts is more crucial now than ever as demands for STEM graduates are higher now more than ever. According to Pearson Accelerated, jobs in the fields of Computing, Engineering, Physical and Life Sciences, as well as Mathematics are the most in demand careers right now for STEM students.

How Does STEM Affect the economic landscape?

The future landscape is going to be radically different than what it is today. Currently in places like Japan, highly economically developed, are using robots for simple jobs like farming or manufacturing, which at one point were fully operated by people. This requires people to have a more skilled collection of experience as they need to know more than the basic requirements of education, this being a high school diploma.

STEM SOS Model

Project Based Learning (PBL) is a constructivist instructional approach where students are engaged in meaningful inquiry of personal interest to them and where collaboration and personalized learning are emphasized. Research confirms that PBL is an effective and enjoyable way to learn and develop deeper learning competencies require for success in college, career and civic life. -Buck Institute of Education

STEMSOS is a rigorous, interdisciplinary, standards-focused, and engaging STEM teaching approach that is teacher-facilitated, student-centered and directed through sets of project- and inquiry-based (P&IBL) projects. STEMSOS PBL approach is to maintain the focus on standard-based teaching while enriching and extending the learning of students through PBL projects. The goal is to promote not only collaborative skills and student ownership of learning but also to promote student success in state and national standards.

STEMSOS PBL Showcase is designed to promote and share exemplary student work in PBL projects that can serve as valuable learning and teaching tools for students, parents, teachers, and other educators.

Links for more information on STEM:

• Website Links:

  • Study in the USA

  • STEM Education Teaching and Learning

  • What is Stem?

• YouTube Videos for further explanation:

  • Why STEM?

  • Stem Integration in K-12 Education

Social Media for STEM SOS:

• STEM SOS Facebook

• STEM SOS Twitter