As you know, we at Cemetech are passionate about the importance of inspiring students to pursue STEM careers, and we feel that the earlier students are exposed to the fascinating aspects of science, technology, engineering, and math, the more time they'll have to become interested in the subjects. It's clear that while these are among the highest-paying fields available today, they also have a dearth of students getting interested in them at an early age. There has long been an endemic problem of females being pushed away from technical fields, but a lack of exposure to the fields across the board (arguably aided by a historical lack of focus or rigor in math and science education in the US) has impacted all students. TI has also shown a great deal of interest in battling this trend, and our friends at Texas Instruments are introducing a new program called "STEM Behind Hollywood".

A series of free classroom activities, "STEM Behind Hollywood" shows how TV and movie producers realistically include science and math in shows and movies. It represents a collaboration between TI, their spokesperson Mayim Bialik (whom we met at T^3 2013), and The Science & Entertainment Exchange. The program will discuss such popular topics as zombies, superheroes, space, and forensics; you can get more information from stemhollywood.com. Of course, it ties into the TI-Nspire calculators, so we look forward to more students getting a chance to use their calculators in a more intriguing context than regular classroom instruction.

Oh and by the way, the activity features simulation(s) made in Lua

You can see some videos here :

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEfggCPyK03bhiGNdBrkKsrSZJs4W1Z42

Do you know if the program makes a point about that to students, and lets them know that they could learn to program Lua for their calculators themselves? If not, I think it would be good to add that.

I have actually suggested that once the "event" is over (well, even before, ASAP, in fact !), they should add some "behind the scenes" pages in which the Lua codes behind the simulations would be explained, kind of step by step, or something "educational".
Indeed, showing teachers (and students!) what Lua can do with these direct science applications is definitely a good way to get them interested into Lua programming

*bump* TI has kindly shared the fact that they've released a new TI-Nspire activity connected to the STEM Behind Hollywood program. This activity explores forensic anthropology, used to identify victims of crimes. The full scoop from TI: