Post 2-how do NASA, STEM and PBL meet the needs of 21st century education?

I would have to agree with Fisch's statement that we are preparing students today for jobs that do not exist. We must think on a large scale and be imaginative. NASA scientists focus on this everyday! How do we get to a planet/star/galaxy that we don't even know exists yet? How can we create a shuttle that uses a fuel that hasn't been developed yet? These scientists can't just "google it" as so many of our students do. They have to be creative and come up with new, never before thought of strategies. Project-based learning sets the stage for this. By asking our students to solve a problem, they must learn to think out of the box. Integrating science, technology, engineering and math is necessary to come up with solutions or ideas for most things that would be posed in my class. When the oil spill hit in the Gulf, I wish I had been teaching Biology. What a wonderful (yet tragic) opportunity to use PBL! I would love to have seen what my students could have come up with in order to fix the spill itself or in order to clean up the spilled oil. With all of the wonderful technology that we are lucky enough to have now, I want to see students utilize it to come up with something new.