Every Kid in a Park
Posted on August 29th, 2016 by Mary Lord
To celebrate its 100th birthday and engage the next century’s environmentalists, the National Park Service is opening parks to 4th graders and their teachers and parents for free. Every Kid in a Park includes trip planning tools and teacher activity guides. No time or funds for field trips? Take a virtual tour of the Grand Canyon or explore resources for teaching history to citizen science.
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Tags: Citizen Science, Environmental Engineering, Every Kid in a Park, Internet Resources, National Park Service, Native Americans, nature, Resources for Teachers, virtual field trips, wilderness
Applications are now open for the Science and Engineering Apprenticeship Program (SEAP), a paid summer research program for high school students administered by the American Society for Engineering Education. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors are selected to spend eight weeks working alongside professional engineers and research scientists on real projects at one of 27 Department of Navy labs around the country. Apply by November 30, 2016.
What’s the best way to teach and inspire kids to think like engineers? How can schools ensure equity of access in engineering? The K-12 Engineering Education Podcast plans to cover these and a wide variety other topics in and effort to engage teachers, parents, entrepreneurs, and engineers in finding batter ways to educate and inspire kids in engineering thinking. Give it a listen!
The National Park Service just turned 100 and what better way to celebrate than with the grand opening of a stunning new addition to the National Mall. The $540 million National Museum of African American History and Culture is adorned with a corona, or scrim, of 3,600 bronze-colored cast-aluminum panels that glow at night from the light within, and was built around a 77-ton, 80-foot-long railway car and other huge artifacts housed in its vast below-ground exhibit space. 
Students in grades 3 to 5 use engineering problem solving to create structures from paper, straws, tape, and paper clips that can support the weight of at least one textbook. For the second trial, they examine examples of successful buildings in history and try again. 
Middle and high school students can win up to $20,000 in the Verizon App Challenge — no programming experience necessary. Register teams by November 18, 2016.
