The School District of Mauston is proud to be a lead partner in the Western STEM Consortium--a consortium created and funded through a U.S. Department of Education Mathematics and Science Partnership Grant.  This consortium is comprised of nine local school districts and is impacting STEM education across Wisconsin and the nation.  Just over 10% of Mauston's K-12 teachers are part of the three-year project working with Western Technical College and UW-Stout faculty, local business partners, and the Center for Occupational Research and Development (CORD) to increase content knowledge in science and mathematics and create contextual, STEM-integrated projects.  STEM teachers receive 100 hours of high-quality professional development each year.  During the summer of 2010, our teachers participated in a two week academy looking at STEM through the lens of the Agriculture and Natural Resources career cluster.  The projects they are developing and will implement during the 2010-2011 school year, reflect the Agriculture and Natural Resources Cluster with a Science focus of Organisms and Interdependence, and a Mathematics focus on Statistics and Probability. Technology integration is brought in with multiple science probes, Explore Learning's Gizmos (on-line simulations) and Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet applications. 

For more information about Gizmos visit www.explorelearning.com