Do your students ever imagine themselves as a pilot, video game designer, environmentalist, or surgeon? STEM professionals work in nearly all industries and for a variety of organizations. In their everyday lives, people with STEM backgrounds engage in investigative and diagnostic experiences to seek solutions to real-world problems and enhance technological innovations—sharing their exciting findings and successes with the world. It’s no wonder that today’s students are easily captivated by the rich variety of STEM career paths they can take.
Step into the World of STEM
National STEM Day is a great chance to start your STEM journey! The Siemens STEM Day Channel offers a variety of tools and resources that will help you reinvent your STEM curriculum. You’ll find over 175+ hands-on activities spanning grades K-12 and a teacher support center with educator activities!
Exploring STEM topics can be fun and offer students a brain break to practice thinking outside the box. The N*GEN video series teaches younger students about a variety of STEM topics. Learn about the wetlands, robots, food, bees, and more through these engaging videos!
To excite older students about STEM, dig into the Dig into Mining Channel! Created in partnership between Freeport-McMoRan and Discovery Education, this interactive educational program for students grades 6-12 uncovers the use of metals such as copper in our everyday life and provides students a deeper understanding of today’s hard rock mining industry with dynamic resources. A new STEM learning game, HAUL! Interactive, lets students take the wheel of a 2-story high mining truck to practice mathematics and explanation skills.
Connect the Classroom to the Real World
A great part of STEM learning is the potential for connections to the real world. Make your lessons relevant by helping students connect their in-class learning to out-of-class challenges and topics! Discovery Education has resources to help explore real-world topics that could have a direct impact on your community!
- Futurelab+ connects students and teachers from all communities to the breadth of education and career pathways across biotechnology. With these ready-to-use resources, students can discover the possibilities of biotech— from molecule to medicine!
- With videos that highlight topics like forces and motion, stability and instability, and interactions between different materials, the Innovation at Play Channel helps students embrace STEM problem-solving in any learning environment through standards-aligned interactive digital resources centered around creativity and collaboration.
More Engaging Resources for Exciting STEM Activities
Engineering Dreams
American Petroleum Institute
STEM Careers Coalition
Take a Virtual Field Trip
Virtual Field Trips can create an exciting learning experience to highlight real-world STEM professionals in action! No need to schedule a bus to pick your students up for a National STEM Day field trip on November 8—Discovery Education helps bring the field trip to your classroom!
Step into the world of Extended Reality (XR) where innovation bridges our physical and digital worlds! Join experts at Verizon Innovation Labs to discover how XR is more than gaming. XR is saving lives, revolutionizing education, and impacting industries as well as how cyber experts are ensuring responsible technology development to prepare for this new digital landscape.
With the STEM Forward Channel, students can join Katie Ledecky, 3-time Olympian, 7-time Olympic Gold Medalist swimmer, proud STEM advocate and Team Panasonic athlete, for an immersive deep dive into game-changing tech that’s creating better ways forward for all people. The Winning with STEM Virtual Field Trip transports students to five Panasonic Innovation Centers around North America for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the everyday inspiration Panasonic’s team uses to power groundbreaking new ideas that improve people’s lives and make the world a better place.
The Illumina Foundation and Discovery Education partnered to create DNA Decoded to inspire middle and high school teachers to unlock the power of genomics and impact the future of their students. The Virtual Field Trip Genomics: Decoding the Language of Life transports students to the Illumina labs in San Diego, California to meet real-world experts who are harnessing the power of the genome to improve lives and support the Earth’s natural resources.
Inspire the Next Generation with Career Exploration
What are some ways you show students how STEM skills can lead to life-changing careers? Perhaps you can invite local STEM professionals to give a presentation on their career paths and how they achieved it or ask students to select a famous STEM professional for a report! There are many creative ways to engage students with STEM career paths, starting with the career resources in Discovery Education Experience.
Next, dive into the energy-water nexus with the Conservation Station Channel, an educational initiative from Itron and Discovery Education. This innovative, standards-aligned program encourages middle school students to explore the relationship between water and energy through the lens of conservation, with career profiles and STEM sit downs to highlight people who are making cities smarter and moving us toward a more energy-efficient future.
Get Girls Interested in STEM
Inspiring all students to explore STEM careers is important, but a recent survey by Girls Who Code and Logitech shows that early influences have a big impact on women entering STEM careers. 60% of women surveyed said a parent or a teacher encouraged them to study computer science, demonstrating the pivotal role particular adults play in supporting women at a young age. Discovery Education has great resources to help girls see (and learn from) real women working in STEM careers!
The IF/THEN Initiative is committed to showing young girls exactly what a scientist looks like. The IF/THEN Channel seeks to further advance women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) by empowering current innovators and inspiring the next generation of pioneers.
Girls4Tech helps bridge the gap between opportunity, awareness, and readiness by providing schools and community organizations with free resources to educate, inspire, and equip young girls with the skills and confidence they need to envision themselves as future professionals in STEM fields. Find classroom activities, careers profiles, digital lesson bundles, and more in the Girls4Tech Channel!
Don’t miss National STEM Day on November 8! Sparking students’ interest in STEM careers and topics can extend past one holiday and you never know—it could create a lifelong passion!
