Design Squad is a reality competition series where eight teenagers learn to think smart, build fast, and contend with a wild array of engineering challenges. With Design Squad Nation, engineer co-hosts Judy and Adam travel across the country, working side by side with kids and using engineering to turn kids’ dreams into reality. On the Web, Design Squad provides students with a forum to brainstorm, submit project ideas, and respond to the ideas of others through sketches and real world prototypes. Check out this clip below in which a cast member designs, prototypes, and completes a working pulley.
Posts Tagged ‘STEM’
Classroom Tools: Engineer with Design Squad Nation
Posted in Teaching Tools, tagged design squad, engineering, grades 6-8, STEM on April 3, 2013 |
Design Squad’s Free STEM Google Hangout Tomorrow
Posted in Parent Resources, Teaching Tools, tagged activities, DIY, grades 3-5, grades 6-8, STEM, teaching tools on February 5, 2013 |
This Wednesday, Design Squad is joining forces with MAKE Magazine for a live STEM Google Hangout. The show’s host, Deysi Melgar, will be presenting 5 kid-friendly DIY projects that are perfect at-home or in-the-classroom activities. Educators are welcome to join in on the hangout to learn about these great classroom activities.
The Live STEM Hangout will take place tomorrow, Wednesday, February 6th at 3:30EST/12:30PST. Check it out at this link: https://plus.google.com/+MAKE/posts.
Careers in Science
Posted in PBS Resources, Teaching Tools, tagged careers, K-12, learning, pbs, PBS Kids, pbs learningmedia, Pre-K, science, STEM, video on January 18, 2013 |
What better time to discuss careers and goal setting with your students than on the cusp of a new year? This month, PBS LearningMedia features a collection of resources focused on STEM careers that’s both motivating and insightful. Here’s a sampling of what you’ll find from PBS’s digital media library for preK-13+ educators:
I Want to Be A Scientist! (PreK-1, Video Group) Inspire curiosity around careers in science as your early learners follow Sid and his classmates on a trip to the Science Center where they meet a real-world biologist, a chemist, an engineer, and an astronaut.
Scientist Profiles (Grades 4-6, Videos): Robotic Life Scientist Inspired by “Star Wars,” this MIT professor works on the development of robots that display personality. Take a look at this fun, high-tech career (Spanish version also available.) Game Designer: Do your students love video games and sports? So does David Ortiz. Show them how computer science, design, and math influence his work as a video game designer.
Designing a Roller Coaster (Grades 5-12, Video and Discussion) Introduce your students to roller coaster designer, Chris Gray. Learn how the forces of gravity and potential energy impact his work as an engineer and help him manufacture a thrilling roller coaster experience.
NOVA Launches NEW Energy Lab Website
Posted in PBS Resources, Teaching Tools, tagged Energy, grades 9-12, pbs, science, STEM on December 21, 2012 |
For something we use every day, energy is a pretty mysterious concept, one ripe for students’ imaginations. That’s why NOVA is excited to announce the launch of the Energy Lab – the second Lab in a growing collection of research resources on the NOVA Labs site. In this Lockheed Martin-funded site, teens and students can design renewable energy systems for cities across the U.S. and compete with lab participants nationally, with the best designs meeting energy demands while saving on money and carbon emissions.
This Lab investigates what energy is, how it can be converted into useful forms, and why some sources are running low. More specifically, it encourages students to consider:
Using Energy: What is energy and how can we produce and use it more efficiently?
Finding alternatives: What alternatives do we have to limited resources like fossil fuels?
Storing and Moving energy: What are the challenges of moving electricity where it needs to be, when it needs to be there?
An Educator guide provides teachers with a research challenge for students, a video library, and opportunities for students to interact with scientists and engineers.
2012-2013 Christopher Columbus Awards
Posted in Grants/Awards, tagged grades 6-8, problem solving, scientific method, STEM, teams on October 26, 2012 |
The Christopher Columbus Awards is a national, community-based STEM competition for middle school students and teachers looking to make a difference in their community. Working in teams, students identify a problem in the community and apply the scientific method to create an innovative solution.
Maximum award: $25,000 grant
Eligibility: schools (grades 6-8) and community groups
Deadline: February 4, 2013
Music Resources for Learning
Posted in Lesson Plans, Parent Resources, PBS Resources, Teaching Tools, tagged classroom, K-12, lesson plan, music, PBS Kids, pbs learningmedia, Pre-K, STEM, video on July 16, 2012 |
Music filling the classroom can be a great way to capture students’ interest and, when integrated into the curriculum, enhance their learning. At PBS LearningMedia, you’ll find scores of music resources for all grades such as:
Music and Multiple Intelligences (Grades PreK-13+) This resource includes a definition of multiple intelligences and two videos providing examples of using students’ musical intelligence for learning. By addressing multiple intelligences in lesson plans, teachers are able motivate all students to learn.
We Are the Music (Grades 3-4) Explore music and dance sequences of 11 cultural groups who have settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico over the past 700 years in diverse communities such as the Native Americans, Spanish, Crypto-Jewish, Celtic, German, Greek, Japanese, Tibetan, the Central Americans. All performers and narrators in these segments are of school-age.
Point of View – Sharing a Perspective on Music (Grades 6-12) In this lesson plan and video, students share opinions on music and write two critiques of a band playing the “St. Louis Blues,” one from their own point of view and one from that of a music critic, reflecting upon how their point of view influenced their opinion.
We also want preschool educators and parents to know about PBS Kids Rocks!, PBS Kids’ first music album, available on iTunes and Amazon. Each song is designed to help kids learn about a variety of topics to bolster their reading and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills.
National STEM Video Game Challenge Winners Announced
Posted in Programming Highlights, Teaching Tools, tagged STEM, Video Game Challenge, winners on June 6, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Kids don’t just play video games anymore – they make them! The winners of the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge were recently announced in Washington, D.C. Inspired by President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate Campaign,” the competition seeks to motivate interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning by tapping into students’ natural passion for playing and making video games. “Well-designed video games can help students excel in STEM and have fun doing it”, said Tom Kalil, Deputy Director for Policy in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Twenty-eight middle school and high school students from across the country were selected as winners for their original game designs. In addition, two winners were awarded in the Collegiate category and three in the Educator category. Game highlights for the winners can be found online.
Teacher Favorites from PBS TeacherLine
Posted in PBS Resources, Professional Development, tagged K-12, literacy, math, pbs teacherline, professional development, reading, science, STEM, technology, writing on May 8, 2012 |
Dedicated teachers know how invaluable true professional development is to their practice. If you’ve been thinking it will be soon time for you to engage in enriching graduate-level classes but have difficulty envisioning where a course would fit into your life right now, you may want to consider PBS TeacherLine, online learning for preK-12 teachers. While you’ll keep pace with other educators in the course, you’ll be able to go online anytime, anywhere for an asynchronous learning experience.
PBS high-quality online courses provide expertly trained facilitators who assure you’ll collaborate with colleagues from around the country, have online discussions, and receive rich, applicable content. The following four PBS TeacherLine courses are among teacher favorites. They all start next month, along with many other high-quality courses open for enrollment now:
RDLA157 Teaching Phonemic Awareness and Phonics, Grade PreK-3, eligible 3 credits
RDLA125 Children’s Authors on the Web: Online Sites that Motivate Students, Grades K-6, eligible 2 credits
INST320 Connecting Family, Community, and Schools, Grades K-12, eligible 2 credits
INST300 Curriculum Mapping by Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Grades K-12, eligible 2 credits
You can also learn more about graduate credit options with accredited providers.
Video Lending Library Feature: NOVA’s Secrets of the Sun
Posted in Teaching Tools, tagged grades 9-12, physics, science, solar system, STEM, sun, Video Lending Library on April 19, 2012 |
The recent solar storms have called our attention to something we all take for granted — our sun. Scientists have long viewed our sun as an amazing physics laboratory and now, using new spacecraft and Earth-based telescopes, they can view the sun as never before in their quest to understand our nearest star. Borrow the video, NOVA: Secrets of the Sun (ID 2225), by clicking here. Check out a preview of the video below:
