Utilizing Modern STEM Tools and Devices to Promote Space Weather Awareness Across K-12 Grade Levels

Space weather, which includes solar phenomena like solar flares, geomagnetic storms, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), significantly affects Earth's magnetosphere and various technological systems that humans depend on daily. Most adults are either unaware of, or confused by, the threats that space weather poses to our modern way of living. This topic is also rarely broached in the K-12 educational science curricula. Through this paper we argue that the integration of space weather as a topic in the curriculum offers an opportunity for interdisciplinary learning, spanning physics and astronomy, computing, robotics, data science and machine learning, together with considering social, economic, and infrastructure implications of its effect. Integrating educational STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) hardware and software devices into the study of space weather provides a dynamic and interactive way to introduce students of all grade bands to the science behind the cosmic dance that intertwines space, the Sun, and the Earth.