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Whether it’s a school garden, local park, or distant rain forest, the natural world offers a great way to encourage inquiry and hands-on applications of STEM lessons.

National Environmental Education Foundation, with funding from the Mitsubishi Corporation Foundation for the Americas, is offering funding for teachers, after-school programs, and nature organizations for projects that support the integration of Greening STEM into current or new programming or curriculum.

Applications are due April 5, 2016.

Research shows that environmental education helps foster creative thinking, builds communication and leadership skills, and makes academic subjects rich and relevant. The NEEF grants – between $500 and $1,000 each – are to help educators and after-school program providers cover the costs of curriculum, field trips, transportation, professional development, and other areas that will have a lasting impact beyond a single event.

• Application Deadline: 11:59 pm Central time Tuesday, April 5, 2016. All applications must be submitted through NEEF’s online grants management system.
• Grantee Announcement: Grantees will be announced April 22, 2016. NEEF will promote the winners and their programs using a variety of communications tools and strategies.
• All applicants must register for National Environmental Education Week:
  • Learn more
  • Register here
  • Teach K-12 students in an educational setting in the United States or eligible U.S. jurisdiction
  • Be an employee of a school district or informal education institution
  • Anticipate being an educator for the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 school year.

Grants can be used to cover costs associated with delivering programs, such as program supplies or professional development, but cannot be use to lobby or influence legislation or elections; cover budget shortfalls or costs for events that already have occurred; acquire land; or pay for scholarships or fellowships.

Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service environmental education program at Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge, Rhode Island. Taken May 2007

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Teachengineering.org activity contributed by Tufts University’s Center for Engineering Educational Outreach. 

Grade Level: 3-5

Time Required: 40 minutes

Cost Per Group: $1

Summary: After reading the story Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary, students will build an alarm system for something in the classroom, as the main character Leigh does to protect his lunchbox from thieves. Students will learn about alarms and use their creativity to create an alarm system to protect their lockers, desk, or classroom door. Note: this activity can also be done without reading “Dear Mr. Henshaw.”

Engineering Connection: Engineers are constantly confronted with problems that must be solved as thoroughly as possible. Typically they will start with a simple solution and then redesign it in order to make the solution more reliable and efficient. Sometimes engineers are lucky and get it right the first time, but it is not unusual for a product to go through several redesign phases to improve the product.

Learning Objectives

After doing this activity, students will gain a better understanding of:

• The importance of alarm systems and where they are found.
• How to work in teams, with members having different roles.
• Design techniques and construction methods.
• Understanding the importance of cause and effect when designing an alarm.

Learning Standards

Next Generation Science Standards

Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

International Technology and Engineering Educators Association: Techology

• D. Tools, materials, and skills are used to make things and carry out tasks.
• H. Resources are the things needed to get a job done, such as tools and machines, materials, information, energy, people, capital, and time.
• K. Tools and machines extend human capabilities, such as holding, lifting, carrying, fastening, separating, and computing.
• L. Requirements are the limits to designing or making a product or system.
• D. Requirements for a design include such factors as the desired elements and features of a product or system or the limits that are placed on the design.
• D. When designing an object, it is important to be creative and consider all ideas.
• D. Invention and innovation are creative ways to turn ideas into real things.
• D. Identify and collect information about everyday problems that can be solved by technology, and generate ideas and requirements for solving a problem.

Materials

• Small bells (inexpensive)
• String
• Elastics
• Balloons
• Wires
• Marbles
• Paper towel tubes
• Pipe cleaners
• Popsicle sticks
• Paper cups
• Duct tape
• Typical classroom supplies (such as paper clips, paper, tape, glue, erasers, scissors, etc.)
• Group worksheet PDF (one per group)
• Rubric for Performance Assessment (one per group)

Introduction/Motivation

What is the purpose of a car alarm? It helps prevent thieves from stealing your car by triggering a loud alarm and drawing attention to the scene. How would you protect something that is valuable to you from being stolen if you were unable to watch it at all times? As an engineer, you must think of creative ways for protecting your locker, desk, or classroom door. Can you create a set of booby traps that will alert you if someone is trying to break in?

Engineers often work in teams. The advantage of working in a team is that everyone’s ideas can be combined to come up with a great idea. This concept of sharing ideas is called brainstorming.

Vocabulary/Definitions

Design: To plan and make something in a skillful way.

Procedure

Background

An alarm is a device that warns or signals, as by a bell, buzzer, or whistle. They work by having some type of unwanted action set them off. There are many different types of alarms. Some examples are: fire alarms, car alarms, alarm clocks, and security alarms.

Recommended Resources:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/inside-clock.htm

http://www.zetnet.co.uk/sea.jnp/earth.4/time.htm

http://www.howstuffworks.com/digital-clock.htm

Procedure

Teacher should gather materials to be used by students to build the alarms.

Introduce the topic of alarms to the students. Discuss the use of alarms in our daily lives and where they are found. If using the book, “Dear Mr. Henshaw,” discuss why Leigh built an alarm.
Explain to the students their goal: They must build an alarm system to protect something in the classroom using only the materials that you give them. Some ideas are to build alarms to protect the students’ lockers, desks, backpacks, the classroom door, or a window.
Identify the materials available to the students. Discuss any safety concerns that should be considered with these materials being used. Explain that the alarm system must consist of at least three steps, and should use the least amount of materials as possible.

Talk about and explain what a design is and why it is important. Explain your criteria for the grading of their designs. NOTE: you may want to begin with a one-step alarm, and make it more challenging by adding steps. Break the students up into groups of 3 or 4. They should collaboratively accomplish the task of building an alarm.

Ask students to draw the design of their alarm system on paper, including an explanation describing what their alarm does, how it works, and what materials were used.
Have each group present their final products to the class and explain how it works.

Investigating Questions

What are alarms used for?
Why do we need alarms?
Where do we find alarms?
Why did Leigh in “Dear Mr. Henshaw” need an alarm?
What do most alarms have in common?
What might we need an alarm for in the classroom?

Assessment

Rubric for Performance Assessment (pdf):

http://www.teachengineering.com/collection/wpi_/
activities/wpi_make_an_alarm/assessment_worksheet.pdf

References

Cleary, Beverly. Dear Mr. Henshaw. Camelot, New York, New York. 2000.

Owner: Center for Engineering Educational Outreach, Tufts University

Copyright: 2004 by Worcester Polytechnic Institute including copyrighted works of other educational institutions; all rights reserved.

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2016 Intel Science Talent Search top winners. From left: Amol Punjabi, Paige Brown and Maya Varma

Proving that age is no object, 40 high school students gathered at the National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C., this March to show the world that homework doesn’t have to be boring.

They were finalists in Intel’s Science Talent Search, a competition that seeks out the best and brightest young scientists across the nation on behalf of the Society for Science & the Public. This was a historic year for the competition: not only did it mark its 75^th anniversary, but this was also the first year in which women dominated the competition. Two of the top prize winners women, as were more than half of the finalists!

Here are four outstanding engineers from the group of finalists:

First-Place Winner: Paige Brown  

Rivers and streams are a muddy topic for Paige Brown, who used to play in them as a kid. “They always looked nice,” she said. “I had no idea that they could be having pollution issues.” When she tested them, however, she found alarmingly high levels of phosphorus or E. coli in six out of the seven. Brown is a 17-year-old senior at Bangor High School in Maine with ambitions of studying chemical engineering in college. She built low-cost scrubbing filters out of “dollar-store hair clips and floral foam,” she said. Attached to these were tiny filaments. Her inspiration? Silly string. Her pollution scrubbing system won the First Place Medal of Distinction for Global Good, along with $150,000 and is currently going through the patent process. “I hope to have a patent by the time I graduate!” she said, adding that she plans to commercialize her cost-effective and efficient system soon.

First-Place Winner: Maya Varma  

Maya Varma’s research provides a breath of fresh air for people who suffer from chronic lung diseases. Using skills in electrical engineering, coding, and 3D printing, she turned $35 of hobby supplies into an affordable and accurate diagnostic spirometer—a lung-testing machine that usually costs hundreds or thousands of dollars! She was inspired when a friend of hers went to the hospital for a severe asthma attack and now wants to provide her tool to low-income areas. Her spirometer won the First Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation, which celebrates students “who demonstrate the problem-solving aptitude of an engineer through innovative design and creativity” and includes a $150,000 cash prize. Varma is a 17-year-old senior at Presentation High School in California.

Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna

Cement is a serious thing. It forms our cities and holds critical structures in place. When the Deepwater Horizon underwater oil well broke, pouring millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf Coast, a weak cement mix was partially to blame. Augusta Uwamanzu-Nna, an 18-year-old senior and valedictorian at New York’s Elmont Memorial High School, became interested in cement in tenth grade when she found out that its production greatly contributed to carbon emissions. Her project sought ways to use nanoclay ingredients to make stronger undersea oil wells, finding that a small addition of these ingredients greatly improved cement composition and strength.

Demetri Maxim 

Demetri Maxim is proof that if you have a problem, you have to solve it yourself. Maxim, along with other members of his family, suffers from polycystic kidney disease, a hereditary condition that causes growths on the kidneys. After watching his mother go through a life-saving kidney transplant when he was a child, Maxim started thinking about ways of replacing organs without to harvest them. His project finds ways of growing kidneys from scratch, using the patient’s own skin cells and a 3D-printed scaffold. One day, he hopes his research will allow transplant patients to forego the anti-rejection drugs they have to take because the organs will come from their own cells. Maxim is an 18-year-old senior at Gould Academy in Maine.

Story reported and written by Jenn Pocock, American Society for Engineering Education assistant editor

Images courtesy Intel and Society for Science and the Public. Photo of Demetri Maxim by Intel/Kathy Wolfe

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Museums and zoos may seem unlikely STEM classrooms. Yet these “informal” settings can spark the kind of deeper learning and problem-solving skills that teachers strive to foster.

Connected Science Learning, a new online journal for STEM educators, seeks to bridge that gap by highlighting effective programs and partnerships that enhance STEM learning. The inaugural issue, released March 15, for example, includes Omaha’s “Zoo Academy,” a high school within a zoo where students studied an endangered beetle and used engineering practices to develop a tool that helped larvae survive to adulthood. (Photo, above.) Other articles examine a STEM program in Minneapolis Public Schools and a Franklin Institute program on applying neuroscience to education.

Educators can sign up to receive the free journal, which was launched with pilot funding from the National Science Foundation and is being produced by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC).

A second issue that will focus on professional development is scheduled for publication in fall 2016.

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Where did the food on your plate come from?

As part of her Let’s Move! campaign, First Lady Michelle Obama is is once again teaming up with flagship PBS station WGBH Boston, the U.S. Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to host the fifth annual Healthy Lunchtime Challenge to promote cooking and healthy eating among young people across the nation.

One winner from each U.S. state, territory, and the District of Columbia will win the opportunity to be flown to Washington, D.C. to attend the 2016 Kids’ “State Dinner” at the White House, where a selection of the winning recipes will be served.

Open to children between the ages of 8 and 12, this year’s challeng spotlights homegrown pride and invites participants (with their parents or guardians) to create an original recipe that is healthy, affordable, and delicious.

This year, in celebration National Nutrition Month and the MyPlate, MyState initiative, kids (and their families) are encouraged to include local ingredients grown in their state, territory, or community As part of the effort, the USDA’s is serving up maps with each state’s signature food products as well as regional maps where fruits, grain, and other produce is grown, plus math and nutrition lessons.

The deadline for entries is April 4, 2016.

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NOTE: There is a free informational webinar March 17. Register HERE.

You don’t have to be into crafts to appreciate the maker movement’s popularity. What’s not to like about cardboard dinosaur sculptures and DIY robots?

Along with unleashing creativity and invention, the benefits of making extend to education. Students who engage in hands-on STEM learning, for example, are more likely to understand concepts and score better on tests, University of Chicago brain research shows.

Could makerspaces transform career, technical, and vocational training? The U.S. Department of Education believes so and has launched a CTE Makeover Challenge to kick-start the process.

High schools are invited to submit designs for a CTE makerspace by April 1. (They need not be certified Fab Labs.) Those eligible can attend a six-week bootcamp to provide expertise in makerspace design and planning. Up to 10 schools will receive $20,000 in cash and other prizes to turn their envisioned makerspace into a reality.

Register HERE for the March 17 informational webinar.

The challenge builds on President Obama’s Nation of Makers initiative, which includes the National Week of Making June 17 to 23, 2016.

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Human travel to Mars. Building sustainable cities. Developing new, large-scale energy sources like fusion or creating better medicines and technologies to improve health.

There’s a name for such ambitious projects that span disciplines and geographical boundaries: Mega Engineering. And it’s the theme for the National Academy of Engineering’s 3rd annual Engineering for You video contest (E4U3).

This year’s contest asks participants to create a 1- to 2-minute video that (1) introduces and highlights the importance of a particular mega-project to people and society; and (3) suggests contributions to its development.

The “Best Video Overall” will be awarded $25,000, with a People’s Choice Award of $5,000. Top videos in each competition category are eligible for a prize of up to $5,000.

The deadline for submitting videos is May 31, 2016.

Visit www.e4uvideocontest.org to learn more.

For any additional questions, please email E4Uvideocontest@nae.edu

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Calling all K-12 Starfleet cadets! We hope you’re hungry for innovation because Star Trek and NASA want you to “boldly go where no one has gone before” and engineer the future of food in space.

The Future Engineers Star Trek Replicator contest asks students 5 to 19 to create a digital 3-D model of a non-edible, food-related item for astronauts living aboard the International Space Station in the year 2050 to 3-D print.

Eating a meal in space involves more than the actual food itself – from growing plants to preparing and eating meals. (Check out NASA’s history of space food.) 

There are many things to consider, so check out our Rules Summary and Design Guidelines prior to starting your design.

The program launched on February 16 and submissions are due May 1, 2016.

Prizes include a trip to New York to see the Space Shuttle Enterprise with an astronaut and a 3-D printer for the school. The site also features videos about 3-D printing applications from Teddy Bear manufacturing to printing human body parts.

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