Getting Started

Welcome to the Ford STEAM Lab learning program. The purpose of this program is to engage you in preparing

students to succeed in ambitious learning experiences, pursue a path to a STEM career and address challenges

using innovative thinking and creative problem solving skills. As a facilitator of this program, you will guide students

throughout the program to successfully understand the concepts and come up with innovative solution ideas for

problems commonly seen in your community.

This getting started lesson will give you an overview of the program in general and a preview of the resources

available to you for learning and use in your classroom.

Dive in to learn more!

The overarching goals of this program include:

Preparing students for a complete Hack-a-thon experience.

Getting students interested in careers in STEM and creating Apps

Exposing students to careers in STEM and

tech entrepreneurship

Introducing students and educators to Design

Thinking methodologies

This is a blended learning program and progresses through the five units of Dream, Create, Build, Plan, and Pitch.

The titles indicate what the unit intends to accomplish for the students.

After completing the program, students will have a functioning App prototype, business plan and the ability to pitch

their App to investors.

Here is a brief description of the goal of each phase.

The purpose of this phase is to introduce students to and excite them about STEM education and expose them to the

wide array of interesting experiences and career opportunities in the STEAM domain. They will be introduced to

some young and amazing tech entrepreneurs who are really just like them. They will learn what these young leaders

have accomplished using technology and how they have helped their communities and the nation. Celebrity

technopreneurs will motivate them to explore the possibilities out there and be passionate about whatever they do.

This phase will introduce the concept and process of

Design Thinking. Students begin by learning about and

possibly discussing issues with facilitators, friends,

family, and members of their community and narrowing

down topics of interest in order to define a clear focus.

They will then use the Design Thinking process to

generate ideas based on their interactions with the users

(community) and create prototypes of their concepts.

In this phase, students will

take their initial concepts and

build them into functional

products that can be shared

with users for feedback and

further development.

The activities in this phase will

structure students’ development

of business plans. Students will

develop initial business plans

that have them consider critical

business challenges and promote

their products in the market.

In this final phase, students will create a

credible and inspiring presentation to persuade

others to invest in their solution concept or

product. When a pitch is successful, students

can further the development of their concept or

product with support of the investors and move

to possible execution – taking their dreams and

ideas from concept to implementation.

You will have access to a self-paced e-learning program that is designed to initiate you into each of these units and

also develop a working knowledge of our Design Thinking concept and process.

Dream

Create

1.0 STEM CAREERS AND TECH

ENTREPRENEURSHIP

1.1 The Innovation Economy

1.2 Role of STEM

1.3 STEM To STEAM

1.4 Tech Entrepreneurship

2.0 INTRODUCTION TO A HACK-A-THON

2.1 What is a Hack-a-thon?

2.2 Goals of a Hack-a-thon

2.3 Phases Involved

Through your teacher login, you will have access to a self-paced e-learning program that is designed to help you get

initiated into the Dream and Create phases and get a good understanding of the Design Thinking concept and

process.

3.1 DESIGN THINKING

PROCESS

3.1.1 What is Design Thinking? 3.1.2 Key Benefits of Design Thinking 3.1.3 Additional Resources

3.2 DISCOVER NEEDS

3.2.1 What is it? 3.2.2 Why is it Important? 3.2.3 Strategies and Tools 3.2.4 How to Facilitate Discovery of Needs 3.2.5 Student Action Plan

3.3 DEFINE CHALLENGES

3.3.1 What is Problem Definition? 3.3.2 Strategies and Tools 3.3.3 How to Facilitate Defining of Challenges 3.3.4 Student Action plan

3.4 IDEATE

3.4.1 What is Ideation? 3.4.2 How Does it Help? 3.4.3 How to Ideate 3.4.4 How to Facilitate Ideation 3.4.5 Additional Strategies 3.4.6 Action Plan

3.5 MOCK-UP/EXPERIMENT

3.5.1 What is Experimentation? 3.5.2 Why is it Needed? 3.5.3 How to Facilitate Experimentation 3.5.4 Strategies and Tools to Create a Prototype 3.5.5 Student Action Plan

3.6 EVALUATE/VALIDATE

3.6.1 What is Validation? 3.6.2 Why is it Important? 3.6.3 How to Facilitate Evaluation 3.6.4 How to Validate the Prototype

The teacher’s e-learning is a self-paced learning program that covers all the modules in order. The content covers

the concepts that you need to be familiar with in order to handle your classroom sessions effectively. The e-learning

uses rich media and interactivities to make learning an engaging experience. Additionally, you can also use the rich

media pieces to engage your students during the instructional hours.

Apart from the learning material, you will have access to ‘Facilitator Notes’ that will help you create engaged learning

experiences and develop enthusiastic learners. It will include recommendations on how you can introduce concepts,

suggestions on media resources that you can show in the classroom and examples of activities that you can

conduct to reinforce student understanding. In general, it is preferable that the student learning be project driven as

much as possible.

Facilitator Notes

As soon as you log into the program, you can see your profile details on the top left of the page. The progress bar to

its right will indicate your progress through the learning. The Begin button beside the progress bar will take you to

the e-learning program. The My Classroom Sessions include the recommended pre-defined session plan .and also

the option to Custom-build your session. By default, you will see the recommended sessions when you reach this

page.

This will be part of the next phase

Once you log into the course, you will find the title of the lesson on the top of the page and the TOC on the left side of

the page. The TOC icon can be used to view or hide the TOC at any point in time.

You can progress through the course linearly by using the page navigation controls or directly jump into a topic by

selecting it from the TOC.

The lesson pages are designed to make content easily understandable and engaging. The various types of content

that you will come across are static text-based content, images and graphics, interactive content, animations and

presentations, videos etc.

For interactive components, you can access content by following the user-instructions provided inside a yellow box

on the page.

You can access the facilitator notes for a topic by selecting the ‘i’ icon provided on the top right corner of the page.

You can also access the facilitator’s notes for the entire program, lesson-wise, from the Resources tab.

Students will have access to online learning material for a quick recap of the important concepts they were

introduced to in the classroom. The content will cover only the key points and focus on instructions and guidance

that students might need when embarking on projects using the Design Thinking methodology. They will also face

online quiz questions and HOTS questions which they have to complete online and share with their teacher and

team-mates.

The curriculum for the Ford STEAM Lab program is aligned to

standards mandated by Common Core and NGSS. You will find

the mapping available as a resource in your login.

This will be part of the next phase

There will be an element of gamification tied in to their learning and activities. The purpose is to keep their

enthusiasm and excitement going while in the self-paced learning mode. They will also have access to resources

such as pre-defined templates that they can print or save for use during or after each phase of their project.

You are now familiar with the Ford STEAM Lab program and its online learning environment.

Get started and take advantage of the resources and the learning experience!