Abstract:

Modern education has been presented as a very challenging field due to the amount of resources available to the teacher and the lack of student's motivation. The use of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) activities is a path to bind the technology's resources to the improvement of student's learning and creativity, hence, fighting the lack of motivation to learn.

In this paper we present STEM Projects for students of 7th and 8th grade (12-14 years old) implemented in a Middle School based in three different dimensions of approach:
- Real physical projects: like the construction of a car propelled by air or a game of table soccer;
- Virtual projects: utilization of computer software to draw and build models of atoms, molecules, cells, the Solar system and other tasks;
- Technological projects: Use of low-cost technology devices, such as micro:bit or Arduino to create projects of everyday life, like for example, parking sensors, a robotic arm, traffic lights, etc.

In this work we will also discuss the difficulties and challenges of these activities' implementation regarding the material acquisition, space availability, student's motivation, group organization and workforce needed from staff.

Although some complications may arise during the development of the STEM projects, undoubtedly there are advantages for the student's learning process, such as the improvement of fine motor coordination, cognitive development, increase in problem solving skills (from planning what to do, up to introducing adaptations if something does not work as expected) and acquisition of new knowledge.

We close the discussion of this paper with the possibility to extend STEM projects to other age ranges, more specifically from primary school to secondary school. We also discuss the importance of teacher training for the implementation of STEM projects in schools and how this can be done.

Keywords:

STEM, Project, Virtual, Technology, Low-cost resources.