National Environmental Education Week 2013
Posted on April 16th, 2013 by Mary Lord
As mobile devices become increasingly embedded in daily life, they can enhance children’s experience of nature. This year’s National Environmental Education Week, which falls on April 14-20, 2013, reflects that idea in its theme – Greening STEM: Taking Technology Outdoors.
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Tags: Class Activities, Competitions for Students, Contest, Environmental Education, Environmental Engineering, National Environmental Education Week 2013, Resources for Teachers
Sustainability is the theme of this year’s Mathematics Awareness Month. Teachers will find plenty of activities, contests, and other free educational resources that link math with environmental applications, including the Energy Challenge, which teaches students the mathematics of their school’s energy use and then has them develop and implement an action plan to reduce energy consumption.
Launched to help educators help their students understand that originality matters, Plagiarism Education Week offers free webinars with tips for teachers, new resources for students on conducting better online research and proper citations, and a student poster contest.
In this activity, teams of students in grades 5 to 7 learn about environmental, civil, and sanitation engineering by designing and building model landfills that hold the most garbage, minimize costs, and prevent trash and contaminated “rainwater” from polluting the nearby “city.” Teams test their landfills, and graph and compare designs for capacity, cost, and performance. 
Upload inspiring photos that show how you and your school are engaging students in environmental education by May 31 and maybe win a prize in the 2013 National Environmental Education Week Photo Contest. 
Rust is a big problem for bridges, ships, and other metal structures. It’s also a fascinating challenge for engineers and scientists, as middle and high school visitors to “Corrosion: The Silent Menace,” a new exhibit at the Orlando Science Center in Florida, will discover.
Is there something you use at school — in the classroom, on the field, in your science lab, on the playground, or anywhere on school grounds — that isn’t designed as well as it could be? Ratheon’s MathMovesU “Build It Better” contest is offering cash awards for the best ideas to improve those everyday items. Submission deadline is April 16.
Design competitions are a great way to get students excited about STEM, but finding up-to-date information in time to sign up can be difficult. Engineering Contests, a new aggregator of engineering competitions and scholarships for K-12 and college students, offers a one-stop shop that’s updated monthly.
NASA is hosting an essay contest for students in grades 5 to 12 to help choose whether the next big mission to the outer solar system should go to Saturn’s moon, Titan, or to Jupiter’s moon, Europa. The deadline for submissions is February 28.
