Kevin Dick is a Tech Ed teacher from Mankato West High School and has been named our June Teacher of the Month. 

STEM in the Classroom
West High School offers a Game Design course to students as a means to explore the design process and integrate STEM disciplines along the way.  Once students grasp how important and evident Newton’s 3 Laws of Motion are in gaming they really begin to focus on using physics to create realistic game designs.  His high school classes have also teamed up with their local university to explore the connections between gaming and computer science. College students have come to their classroom to share about the engineering and computer science connected to the gaming industry.

Sharing STEM with Others
Gaming can be enjoyed by a variety of age groups so a highlight for Kevin in sharing STEM learning experiences with others involved inviting eighteen kindergartners and twenty 3rd graders to sample the original game designs students had constructed in class. This collaboration was extremely fun to facilitate as high school students were sharing how they made their games while 3rd graders and kindergartners were becoming immersed into the different gaming experiences available to them.  All kinds of verbal and facial expressions provided much valuable feedback to the Game Design students who built the games. Game Design is extremely instrumental in providing an authentic STEM education.