“Don’t you hate it when … ?” Sharon Tomski, who teaches a senior design class at Milwaukee’s Saint Thomas More High School, uses that everyday phrase to inspire her students to invent things. It works.

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Filed under: K-12 Education News | Comments Off on Pet Peeves Inspire Design

Tags: Engineering Design, Project Lead the Way

The KidWind Project website offers free resources for teaching about wind power in the K-12 classroom. KidWind offers lesson plans, introductions to key concepts, plans and guides for building model wind turbines, and links to resources around the web. KidWind regularly hosts workshops, events, and conventions, as well.

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Filed under: Web Resources | Comments Off on Website: KidWind

Tags: Curriculum, Lesson Plans, Science Fair Projects, Web Resources, Wind Energy, Wind Technology, Wind Turbine, Workshops

Few American K-12 students are ever exposed to engineering in school. Legislation that would start to address that imbalance and fund efforts to bolster engineering education in primary and secondary schools was recently introduced in both the Senate and House. It’s called the Engineering Education for Innovation Act.

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Tags: Public Policy

The Power of the Wind Website supplements The Power of the Wind National 4-H Curriculum, designed to help middle school students learn about wind energy and design, build, and test wind-powered devices.

The Website offers videos, links to other wind energy resources, and clever 2-page activities, including building a weather vane, kite design and improvement, and an energy scavenger hunt.

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Tags: Class Activities, Web Resources, Wind Technology

The NOAA Photo Library captures the work, observations, and studies carried on by the scientists, engineers, and personnel of this diverse agency — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. The 32,000 digitized images demonstrate NOAA’s scientific heritage, spanning the World’s oceans and atmosphere, and transporting viewers “from the surface of the sun to the bottom of the sea, and [from] travels through centuries of scientific thought and observations.” Teachers may find these images helpful to illustrate engineering and scientific principles.

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Tags: Atmosphere, Images, Weather, Web Resources, Website

Boise State University is hosting two summer engineering camps, for students grades 8 and 9, June 6-8, and for girls grades 9 – 10, June 11-12. Students who will use hands-on activities and projects involving self discovery, cooperative learning, critical thinking, and problem solving. Application deadline: May 1.

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Filed under: Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, K-12 Outreach Programs | Comments Off on Students’ Summer: Boise State U. June 2010

Tags: Grades 8-9, Grades 9-10, Programs for Girls, Summer Camps & Programs (Students), Summer Programs (Students)

California students grades 3 through 8 are invited to create award-winning artwork for the 2011 Energy Calendar, in a contest sponsored by the California Energy Commission. Twelve entries will be chosen to illustrate the calendar for the year 2011. Prizes included a $250 U.S. Savings Bond and copies of the Energy 2011 Calendar. Deadline: April 15, 2010.

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Filed under: K-12 Outreach Programs | Comments Off on Contest: California Energy Calendar 2011

Tags: California Energy Commission, Contest, Grades 3-8, Wind Technology

Fifth grade girls at the North Belmont Elementary School in North Carolina are getting a chance to hone their math and science skills with the help of some very special tutors. Each girl is matched with a woman STEM major from nearby Belmont Abbey College, who will act as her mentor.

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Tags: Programs for Girls, STEM subjects

When Katie Cutler let her middle school students pick what to learn, she was blown over by their choice. They voted for wind energy, something she knew little about. As they learned by helping install a turbine at their school, so did she.

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Filed under: Special Features | 2 Comments »

Tags: Idaho National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Wind for Schools, Wind Technology, Wind Turbine