Engineering a Difference
Posted on June 25th, 2012 by Mary Lord
If safe, clean drinking water flows from your tap, thank the teams of engineers who design, maintain, and upgrade the complex systems that deliver life’s most vital fluid. Indeed, engineering is all about identifying and solving society’s urgent problems–as your students will see in “Engineering a Difference,” an award-winning video series sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
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Tags: Engineering a Difference, Engineers Without Borders, Internet Resources, National Science Foundation, Science360 Knowledge Network, STEM videos, Videos, Web Resources
No funds for field trips? Take your students on a virtual tour of the best Museums of the World or check out scores of other engaging STEM education sites and teacher resources in the BestEdSites collection.
Nanooze, a science magazine for students in upper elementary through high school, explores the exciting world of nanotechnology – and the “cool things that happen when you make things really, really small.” It’s distributed free to schools, in classroom packs of 30.
Khan Academy’s YouTube math tutorials may not be Academy Award quality, but their academic merit is clear from their popularity with students and teachers. Now, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and TED are adding to the K-12 STEM video playlist.
The Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, Pa. seeks to inspire learning and curiosity by connecting science and technology with everyday life. By making science both relevant and fun, the Science Center’s goal is to increase science literacy in the region and to motivate young people to seek careers in science and technology. 
The James Dyson Foundation offers several educational resources online and through loans to teachers. Among them, the Engineering Box, available to Chicago-area schools, is designed to teach reverse engineering, can be borrowed for four weeks at a time for free. The Box’s items, which include a Dyson DC26 vacuum cleaner, are used in combination with the Foundation’s Teacher’s Pack and Product Analysis resources.
The Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies (BLOSSOMS) initiative, a new project from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, creates videos with a STEM focus for use in high school classrooms. The program features a library with around 50 math and science lessons, available free for download or as streaming video, and also by request as DVDs and videotapes.
The National Park Service, steward of mountain ranges and monuments, plans to ramp up its STEM education programs with the aim of reaching a quarter of America’s students through real and virtual field trips.
CSEdWeek 2011 celebrates the impact of computing and the need for computer science education. The week incorporates events and resources for students, teachers, parents, administrators, college and university reps, and industry. When: December 4-11, 2011.
