There are two core issues:
-Whether art is important (to teach in schools, to have in FIRST, etc.)
-Whether art should be lumped into STEM (because it’s similar, to get funding, ???)
The first issue is, of course, much more important than the second. That doesn’t mean it’s the same issue, or that it’s even particularly relevant.
Question: How many possible reasons are there for someone to convert the acronym "STEM, into the acronym “STEAM”.
Answer: About a zillion.
Question: Why did FIRST use the term STEAMWORKS in their teaser about the upcoming on-the-field competition season?
Answer: FIRST HQ knows, but I don’t think they have shared their reason(s) with the general public.
Question: Do Chief Delphi discussions about the acronym “STEAM”, often resemble the fable about the blind people describing an elephant?
Answer: Yes - Lots of truths are written, but it’s difficult to piece them together into a comprehensive result.
Blake
In regards to STEAM and the thought of Arts being added, I am all for it. Unfortunately, we have reached an age where the importance of the arts is vastly under rated. Musical and Visual Arts programs around the US are getting cut down, or even completely taken out, due to over all budget cuts in the education system, and the “unimportant” nature of these programs. I may be in robotics here, but my dream is to become a high school band teacher. Art is m whole goal in life, so I am happy to see it gain a bit more recognition.
In regards to the Robotics side of STEAM: art is still a valuable asset. between the average Gary Busey “Gingerdead Man” Photoshop tutorials, to the actual application to photography, advertisements, and many other aspects, Art is a big part of our goal as an organization.
P.S. FRC Rhapsody
I have not read every post in this thread but it seams that some of you seam to have missed the point. Art complements the STEM subjects… it is not a replacement of, but a complement to them. Art is the secret sauce that takes competent engineers and scientists and makes them truly great.
From Leonardo Da Vinci to Steve Jobs the greatest engineers and scientists are those that blended art into the STEM subjects to create designs and ideas that move mankind forward.
Art does belong in STEM, Art belongs in our schools and it belongs in the First Robotics Programs.
As many people have said, I also believe the important part is how we define “art”. I believe the art in STEAM is not art lie painting, but instead art like architecture and design. Just imagine if only people from STEM fields built a building. It would be very functional, but man would it look awful. Or imagine any of apples products without design, it would be an android (jk not trying to start another debate). Architecture and design are just as important as Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
Ther for, I personally support STEAM over STEM.
STEAM
Science, Technology, Engineering, Aeronautics, and Mathematics 
From the Steamworks DLC Pack 1, Recruitment Poster 3:
FIRST® Robotics Competition is the
ultimate Sport for the Mind,TM where
imagination and innovation come
together! By combining the excitement
of sport and beauty of art with the rigors
of science and technology, teams are
challenged to design a team “brand,”
hone teamwork skills, and build and
program robots to perform tasks
against a field of competitors.*
My sense of art embraces much that will not be found in galleries or on stages. Most people appreciate architecture as art. For me, the interplay of electricity and magnetism with dynamic mechanisms is also art.
I have been a Tolkien fan since I first read The Hobbit in 1969. To begin his Appendices to LOTR, the Oxford Don described one of his most ancient characters as “the greatest … in arts and lore.”
For me, this sums both scholarly and professional accomplishments. I place science, technology, engineering, and mathematics among the Arts , and I see the literature and experiences they offer as Lore. We humans are more than animals, because we have arts and lore.
^I did not know that said lemon logo was used for more than the 24 Hours of LeMons. My apologies.
I’m not in a position to fix one up… I was under the impression all Edsels had serious value due to their notoriety. I did know they were expensive/difficult to work on (all of the poorly integrated gadgets and the notorious steering wheel harness problems come to mind). Nice car, I will say that.
thanks! It’s not a nice car, but it’s neat that I drive it around. The 58s had all kinds of fun special Edsel problems, while the 59 was basically a Ford that got beat with an ugly stick. I think that most folks were embarrassed to drive them when the cars were still young, after FoMoCo gave up on the brand, so they just parked them and let them rot. A surprising number of them have low mileage, and excellent original interiors (in the northern parts of the country, at least).
Art is where you find it. According to some. I like to put art in stuff I build, too. A sense of aesthetics on the part of the designer, really makes a machine come to life. Much modern design leaves me cold. I guess I’m just getting old.
And I like the whole STEAM thing, although the Steampunk phenomenon is a bit weird, seeing the world through engineer eyes, as I do. I love when form follows function…Steampunk appears to me to be form without function.
Should be an interesting season!
I have not read the whole thread bu has any one made the connection to STEAM punk to STEAM education…
Frankly I see all things as Art… a well made motor is art to me… you cannot seperate art in to a tower it surrounds every aspect of our life weather one acknoleges it or not…
No joke, somebody in my school district wants to turn STEAM into STREAM, because we need to push Reading across the curriculum.
But on the positive side, PLTW has a modified version of their Intro to Engineering Design class approved as a fine art course in California because there is so much drawing and sketching required.
Your school district does include elementary schools, right? If it doesn’t, THEN I’d be concerned.
Just wait until schools keep adding to STEM for buzzword purposes and eventually it just becomes every subject in taught in schools.
We’re a high school district.
And yes, I’ve seen/heard “Steam” used to describe an English teachers PowerPoint.
I need to actually attend some of these meetings.
We have plenty of artsy kids and adults on our team. We have four team divisions (Robot, Strategy, Imagery, Financial) and we like to focus a lot of time and energy on our artistic presentation. Probably way more than most teams, since we re-theme every year. I still kind of cringe at STEAM, and I agree that it (and STEM, probably) will become a meaningless term soon. It’s just a passing catchphrase for administration and promotional materials on one side, and a watered down concept that includes ever type of education on the other.
The Denver School of Science and Technology hasn’t even been able to get a teacher to show up to their robotics team (meetings or competitions) in more than a decade, let alone get a staff sponsor. I love that team but that has been galling.
I think it’s important to go to the source on these types of discussions. Harvey White coined the term STEAM. In this op. ed by Harvey White, he talks about art as a necessary component of innovation, that a STEM education, devoid of art won’t create the innovation that we need out of our graduates. Basically, our goal in educating the next generation isn’t to create a bunch of STEM robots, because then we find ourselves in the same problem we’re in right now, which is that we don’t have enough new jobs for people. To Harvey, art is the creativity to create the future.
I think he’s kind of right. When we put people through the FIRST progression of programs, yes, we want them to be Scientists, Technologists, Engineers, and Mathematicians, but we want more than that, we want them to be the type of Scientists, Technologists, Engineers, and Mathematicians who won’t tolerate the status quo and will build the future. The type of Engineers we aim to build is not the ones robotically sitting at a desk all day writing documentation, although that is a possible career path for an Engineer. We want the type of Engineers who would make a program to write the documentation for them, do the impossible, and bring on a new era of human prosperity. I think Leadership more accurately conveys the concept, but that looks awful in an acronym. STELM? No thanks.
There are a lot of important concepts that are taught in this kind of program; you can always add another letter! With your L and the aforementioned R, we get ARMLETS.
I think that at a certain length the acronym starts to lose some impact. When it can no longer fit on a Scrabble board we have definitely passed that limit.
I don’t see this as a slippery slope kind of deal. Instead, I think it’s expanding the acronym to finally encompass the full scope of product design. Our students are going off to work in auto companies, architecture, smartphone design, you name it. Each of these fields use not just Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, but art.
The products that succeed are the ones that are not just technical masterpieces, but visual ones as well. This is a large part of how Apple (arguably) passed all other phones in terms of ubiquity in the United States. They’re not much better or worse than their competitors, tech-wise. But their ad campaigns and general look set the aesthetic standard for other phones to follow.
In conclusion, since we’re training our students for careers in tech, we can’t forget that arts are a big part of it.
If the ‘A’ in “STEAM” is what gives us Apple’s particular aesthetically-slick-but-totally-opaque philosophy of UI design, I like it even less
Honestly, though, I just don’t buy this - this certainly isn’t how the term appears to be used with any consistency. As it stands, I don’t see what academic subjects (save for perhaps history) wouldn’t qualify as “STEAM,” and that’s a fatal problem with the term.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. You can’t just be a math whiz to be an engineer (as I am sure you know). I do see it as a slippery slope. Would you agree that you also need to have communication skills to be a good engineer, too? I would say so, but that doesn’t mean that it needs to be added to the STEM acronym. I believe that the acronym exists solely to group similar fields, not to say what you need to be a good product designer or even engineer. A good engineer (or scientist, or mathematician) should not limit themselves to the fields provided to them by some arbitrary acronym like ‘STEM’.
Up to discussion of course, but that is my personal opinion :D.