 The Innovation Collaborative’s first virtual STEAM Summit, Building Learning Through the Intersection of Science and the Arts, successfully aired on Oct. 17, 2024. The Summit featured keynote speakers, conversations among STEAM professionals, and breakout sessions facilitated by leading STEAM researchers and practitioners. These popular breakout sessions addressed ways that K-12 and Out-of-School-Time research and practice can help all students succeed. More than 150 participants registered for the Summit. The wide variety of attendees represented K-12 schools; college campuses; Out-of-School-Time organizations; arts and science organizations; and school leadership programs. Leading off, keynote speaker J.D. Talasek, Director of Cultural Programs at the National Academy of the Sciences, presented an inspiring lecture titled “Pipeline of Creativity”. He spoke about the importance of integrative learning, the elasticity of the mind, and the nexus between arts and sciences. Dr. Kylie Peppler, Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, presented “Tools of Change: Designing STEM Education for Inclusive Learning”. She discussed how some traditional STEM tools and materials are less effective than newer ones in engaging large populations of youth. These newer tools and materials, such as paper circuits and e-textiles, inspire more creativity and have been shown to be more inclusive and to promote successful outcomes. For further information, see the newsletter article Kylie Peppler Summit Follow-up Part 1.  Conversationalists were Dr. Bob Root-Bernstein, Emeritus Professor of Physiology at Michigan State University; Kimberly Olson, visual arts teacher at Centre School in Hampton, New Hampshire; and Dr. Sharon Delesbore, Assistant Principal, Stephen F. Austin High School in Sugar Land, Texas. Their conversations addressed the relationship between scientific discovery and the artistic process, connections between disciplines and the role of problem solving, and the crucial role of school leaders in supporting a culture of inquiry, equity, and creativity.
Six breakout sessions covered a range of relevant STEAM topics. The sessions and session facilitators were:
Click on the session title to visit each group’s created Whiteboard. Summary reports on the breakout sessions are available here. The Innovation Collaborative thanks all presenters and facilitators, in addition to Visibility Chair Jim Palmarini for his role in producing the Summit, and Visibility Team members Michael Jay and Lisa Tang for providing technical support. Visit the Collaborative’s new YouTube channel to see content from the Summit and follow us on social media for updates on upcoming programs. You can reach us at https://www.innovationcollaborative.org/contact.html
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 While the Innovation Collaborative’s website offers access to much of its content, to view our STEAM education resources users must create a password. Among other things, these items include lessons, lesson templates and rubrics, peer-reviewed articles, and recommendations by practitioners and leaders in STEAM fields and research. Listed under the Resource menu, registered users can access these materials by creating a free account on the Innovation Collaborative website.
Follow these steps to create a free account:
 Idea #1: Tools and materials are invitations to play. Tools and materials act as invitations, shaping who feels welcome to engage in STEAM activities. When we consider inclusivity, we ask whether the materials resonate with a broad audience, including girls, boys, and students from diverse cultural backgrounds. A simple test is to lay the materials on a table as an open invitation and observe who engages with them first. Historically, tools like the first personal computers or Legos were designed within a sensibility that appealed primarily to boys. For instance, the keyboard and mouse were conceptualized as metaphors for driving a car—a playful experience that boys often gravitated toward. This history influences how technological tools and materials are perceived and engaged with today.  In contrast, incorporating culturally relevant elements, such as Barbies or characters like Dora the Explorer, can transform these tools into inclusive experiences. By integrating aspects of youth culture familiar to girls, we create a sense of belonging and encourage their participation. Adults experience similar dynamics. For example, a grocery store’s branding and architecture signal whether the space feels welcoming or exclusive, shaping our willingness to enter and engage. These signals—both for adults and children—are a critical consideration when designing tools and environments for inclusivity in STEAM. Idea #2: Certain tools and materials are better for learning. As a learning scientist, I’m interested in the ways in which some tools and materials might be inherently better for learning, especially when they accommodate diverse ways of thinking and creativity. To investigate that, we started looking at gender. Time and time again, in a decade of research, we found that girls are looking for something creative and expressive, such as picking the design color. We are often dismissive of girls’ play, but we looked at the importance of these more “girly” components. We looked at the tools as to whether they would be expressive and offer multiple options for designing using creativity. An example is not creating one bracelet, but lots of different kinds of bracelets. By contrast, traditional “boys’ tools” often emphasize a single, correct solution, such as completing a basic circuit with a battery, wires, and a lightbulb. While such tasks are straightforward and convenient for teachers, they tend to be less engaging for girls, who often seek opportunities to build upon these basics. For example, in coding with Scratch, boys might focus on completing tasks, whereas girls often explore designing avatars and imagining narratives.  Creative tools foster more divergent learning outcomes. Take e-textiles as an example: rather than simply completing a circuit, children use sewing to trace electrical pathways, considering factors like loop continuity and strong connections for functionality. When the light flickers due to a loose connection, they learn about the importance of connectivity—an essential circuitry concept—through hands-on problem-solving. In essence, tools that encourage creativity not only engage children longer but also lead to deeper learning and more innovative outcomes.
When creating e-textiles, children mockup their circuits before sewing them down, experimenting with different configurations and exploring multiple solutions. This process transforms the simple circuit into a creative, hands-on activity that reinforces fundamental scientific principles. Thus, e-textiles not only make circuits more engaging and understandable but also boost children’s confidence in their ability to grasp and apply these concepts. By blending creativity with technical knowledge, these tools create a more inclusive and effective learning environment, particularly for those who might feel excluded from traditional STEM activities.
So, by reimagining tools and materials as inclusive, creative, and educational, we can design STEAM experiences that resonate with diverse learners, fostering both engagement and understanding. Here are some research articles that discuss tools and materials, including e-textile circuitry. Paper Circuits vs. Breadboards: Materializing Learners’ Powerful Ideas Around Circuitry and Layout Design Tools and materials as non-neutral actors in STEAM education Stitching Circuits: Learning About Circuitry Through E-textile Materials  The Innovation Collaborative has begun the process of creating a robust library of K-12 lessons for educators to use in 2025.
This curated collection of lessons will address learners from Early Childhood through grade 12. It will be easily searchable. While the Collaborative has excellent STEAM lessons from its national research, it also is inviting K-12 educators to submit their lesson for consideration in this collection. Helping lead this initiative are the Collaborative’s K-12 Innovation Fellows, top STEAM teachers and administrators from across the US who were chosen for their excellence in teaching and promoting STEAM. To make the STEAM lesson submission process easy, the Fellows will hold a series of webinars that will feature noteworthy STEAM guest speakers and topics to inspire participants. There also will be PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) to walk educators through creating a STEAM experience or adapting an already existing lesson to STEAM. To facilitate creating a STEAM experience, Fellows will take participants through the Collaborative’s STEAM Lesson Template, designed to help educators bring their instruction to life. In this process, invested educators also will learn more about STEAM and how to assess it using the Collaborative’s research-validated rubrics. These webinars and PLCs will take place in 2025. Join us in this process! To do so, please email [email protected]  The Innovation Collaborative, in partnership with Texas Southern University (TSU), hosted a national STEAM Out-of-School-Time conference at TSU in Houston in July, 2024.
This conference is a vital part of their two-year National Science Foundation-funded STEAM working conference project, running from September, 2023, to September, 2025. Instead of the typical two-day gathering, this project allows participants to collaborate and meet the project’s goals before, during, and after the in-person conference. The project’s goals are: 1) Integrate research and practice to determine where the STEAM Informal STEM Learning (ISL) field is in relation to equity, well-being, and belonging today and where it should head going forward; and 2) develop an effective model for a STEAM working conference project. To address these goals, participants organized into seven cohorts to address the topics that the group determined were the most important to address first. These cohorts are: 1) belonging and identity; 2) equity; 3) increasing professional capacity for informal educators; 4) integrating the arts with STEM to promote STEM engagement, learning, and thinking; 5) intersections for formal and informal learning; 6) STEAM creative/innovative thinking and equity; 7) well-being. The cohorts are made up of 23 in-person participants who attended the conference in Houston. They were joined by 26 virtual participants who also work on the project and attended the conference via Zoom. Polled participants give valuable feedback during the project through surveys. All of these participants are highly recognized STEAM researchers and practitioners representing well-known universities and Out-of-School-Time museums and other venues across the US. The Houston in-person conference was preceded by a Museum Day at which the Children’s Museum Houston and the Houston Museum of Natural Science offered participants behind-the-scenes and other engaging learning experiences. Facilitating the conference was Judy Koke, Grant Advisor and Senior Fellow and former Deputy Director at the Institute for Learning Innovation. She was joined by grant Principal Investigator Lillian Poats, EdD, TSU Professor, Department of Educational Administration and Foundations, College of Education; and Co-Principal Investigators Dr. Dwalah Fisher, EdD, TSU Professor, Health, Kinesiology, and Sport Studies, Assistant Athletic Director; and Senior Woman’s Administrator; and Lucinda Presley, Innovation Collaborative Executive Director. On the conference’s first day, a keynote panel engaged participants in hands-on experiences across the arts-science intersections and how these relationships impact well-being. Panelists were John Falk, Founder and CEO, Institute for Learning Innovation; Noel Merriam, Artistic Director, National Hispanic Cultural Museum; and Nicole Temple, VP of Education, Houston Museum of Natural Science. Following the panel were presentations by each cohort where they shared their group’s findings to date and the status of the ISL field in relation to their topic, STEAM, and equity. After these presentations, there was a reflection on what was heard in these presentations and what voices might have been missing.Then, there was discussion in small groups about what success for this project could look like to make a difference in the ISE field. Highlighting the first day were two additional impactful events. In the morning, the participants enjoyed a visit to Texas Southern University’s University Museum to interact with museum staff and the exhibited art by TSU students. In the evening, in partnership with Houston’s Collective Action for Youth, the conference offered an opportunity for participants to learn from and interact with diverse Houston youth around their experiences with STEAM: their aspirations, their learning, and their frustrations. On the conference’s second day, participants first reflected on what they learned from the previous day’s museum visit and the interactions with the Houston youth in the evening. They used these experiences to further inform their work on this project. The full group then discussed next steps, including what the cohorts will do to demonstrate how their topic relates to the current ISL field, STEAM, and equity and what work is yet to be done. After a collaborative dialogue, it was decided that each cohort will develop a PowerPoint and a written paper about their findings, with the group deciding in 2025 what the end product(s) will look like and the products’ dissemination strategies. The Collaborative is very grateful to TSU for their invaluable partnership in this project. The participants loved being at TSU, which was an outstanding host for the conference, devoting countless preparation hours to assure its success.  The Innovation Collaborative, in partnership with Texas Southern University (TSU), hosted a national STEAM Out-of-School-Time conference at TSU in Houston in July, 2024.
This conference is a vital part of their two-year National Science Foundation-funded STEAM working conference project, running from September, 2023, to September, 2025. Instead of the typical two-day gathering, this project allows participants to collaborate and meet the project’s goals before, during, and after the in-person conference. The Innovation Collaborative, in partnership with the National Science Foundation and Texas Southern University (TSU), hosted a national STEAM Out-of-School-Time conference at TSU in Houston, in July. Given the dynamic nature of this important conference, the Collaborative wanted to get real-time reflections from some of the key attendees. Towards that, midway through the in-person convening, we did a series of short video interviews with several attendees, asking them to share their perspective on the conference and STEAM education in general. You can access those videos via the Collaborative’s YouTube channel here.
During our first week in the course, we made paper by hand and used that as a “track” that led us to organic chemistry and hydrogen bonding. Next, we discussed historical pigments, paint-making, and crushed cochineal to make genuine carmine, which is the bright red or purplish-red dye that comes from the cochineal insect. That opened a “track” to explore Aztec codices, history, and culture with my colleague, Dr. Cate DiCesare from CSA’s Art History Department and then we moved into materials science.
We had a dynamic and lively presentation session with the highly respected Temple Grandin as we discussed her most recent book, Visual Thinking, and her commitment to developing essential engineering skills through learning that comes from drawing and sewing and other arts. Next, we looked at quilting and the Gee's Bend quilters as an intersection with history and community-building. Associate Professor Dr. Jesse Wilson joined us for the intersection between painting, optics, and how pigments are being used in Biomedical Engineering. From there, we dove into the direct and powerful intersections between the work done by Josef Albers, detailed in his classic text, Interaction of Color, which gave us a “track” to the Well-Tempered Clavier by J.S. Bach, which opened a direct link with the Principle of Uncertainty by physicist Werner Heisenberg. During the last five weeks of the course, the students will each present a unique intersection of what they’ve explored, and begin also exploring intersections among photography, neuroscience, animal behavior, fiber arts, and more. I'm deeply grateful to the CSU School of Liberal Arts and the Green and Gold Initiative, managed by Dan Beachy-Quick, for supporting this course. What started with a focus on practical exploration across a variety of disciplines has become a deeper dive into questions such as: "How do we think?" "Where do ideas come from?" and "How can we create fuel for creative ideas and intersections? The class sessions have proven to be great fun. As a teacher, I can't think of anything more rewarding than students exclaiming that they've been surprised by an idea or an intersection, and that's happening every single session. Even better is seeing them develop the confidence that can fuel their own creative explorations and intersections. Genesis Motor America sponsors STEAM programs at Georgia Boys & Girls Clubs
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STEAM makes headway in rural Oregon through Sitka Center for Art and Ecology
Tennessee October STEAM festival features 300 events statewide
Innovation Collaborative Fellow featured in 'Smithsonian Magazine'
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