USeIT: Using Squeak to Infuse Information Technology Into the STEM Curriculum
Gene Tagliarini · Sridhar Narayan · Shelby Morge · Lucas Gillispie
The University of North Carolina Wilmington in partnership with New Hanover, Pender, and Brunswick County Schools has designed, developed, and delivered programs to offer expanded IT experiences to students and their teachers. The Using Squeak to Infuse Information Technology (USeIT) project is a 3-year comprehensive project. The NSF program under which this project was funded is called ITEST, Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers. USeIT offers 132 hours of high-quality professional development to approximately 25 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers per year. The project directly targets 50 students in a week-long summer institute each year, with special recruiting emphasis on underserved and underrepresented groups, including female and minority students.
The USeIT project goals identify a focus on blending computer-based modeling using Squeak with problem-based learning (PBL) strategies to create learning activities that cultivate IT skills while enhancing learning in STEM fields. The accessibility of Squeak offers the potential to increase connections to STEM careers but requires combining it with PBL strategies to be effective in meeting the project goals. As part of the project activities, teachers and students learn to use the Squeak media authoring tool to create virtual models that simulate actual science and math-related experiments. For example, participating teachers and students have created computer models to study the interactions in an ecosystem.