Learning Blade® is an interactive, web-based supplemental system for increasing student interest in and attitudes towards STEM careers. Learning Blade introduces students to these and other skills in middle school, a critical age for beginning career path decisions. Students pursue engaging missions about real-world STEM problems such as helping an injured dolphin, building an orphanage after a major earthquake, preventing a web site hack, or solving energy and transportation needs in a new city in an entertaining game-based format. To complete the missions students complete short academic lessons that describe the STEM careers and technologies that would solve such problems in real life. These lessons are presented in the interdisciplinary contexts of science, math, English and social studies.
Problems and questions embedded in the lessons are individually linked to specific academic skills, and the lessons are aligned to the academic standards of all 50 states. The system contains over 100 hours of interactive, online content, and also produces detailed reports on classes or individual students. It also includes downloadable lesson plans for team exercises, simple hands-on projects, and writing and presentations aligned to each of the 12 missions. Research-based data show that Learning Blade doubled the number of students interested in becoming an engineer or scientist and produced a 79% increase in recognizing the value of math in problem solving, a 69% increase in recognizing relevance of school, and a 56% increase in interest in taking advanced math classes. The system has been recognized as an effective STEM tool by Battelle Education, ACT, Inc., STEMworks and others.
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