How do I keep my students engaged in a topic they don't care about?

I started to try to find 'tips' on how to engage students by doing a Google search engine, it was amazing the plethora of knowledge I could find on just tips alone. Most came to the consensus that students need to be moving around, manipulating the information physically and mentally. Items such as reading, taking notes and lecturing are all passive learning activities which not only bore students (no surprise) but also affects classroom management as once students are bored, some start to misbehave.

For younger students I saw a lot of mention for mobile activities, putting important events in sequence by using strip cards, retelling sections of a short story, using artifacts and scavenger hunts. Some of these activities could be modified for middle school ages, but I didn't see a lot of suggestions for older students (high school).

When dealing with elementary science, I found a few suggestions that look like they may be interesting and a worthwhile attempt, or things we already know based on our classroom readings; i.e. Collecting their own data. Other examples are Weekly science problems where class begins with a problem that students must answer related current concepts being studied. I saw suggestions for interactive science websites, webquests, using tradebooks, hands-on and minds-on (Hands on activities with critical thinking) and using multimedia presentations.