ABSTRACT
The Shanghai American School’s Innovation Institute in China incorporates a project-based interdisciplinary curriculum in which ninth and tenth grade students are positioned to grapple with some of the world’s most pressing issues, such as global warming, poverty, and pandemics. The inclusion of maker projects in the curriculum addresses the major concern of the Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM) to STEAM movement, developing innovation in the sciences. Rooted in project-based learning, the core of the Innovation Institute’s philosophy is that the students must consider and respond to open-ended, real-world problems, and construct their own responses. In the first year of the Institute, students are introduced to working in 3D virtual spaces. Using the Computer Assisted Design program Fusion 360, they design and 3D print a model race car to examine how the design of the car affects the physics of its movement.
