Group items tagged

"Worldwide, just 14% of engineers are women. Stanford-educated engineer Debbie Sterling is on a mission to increase that percentage by encouraging girls as young as four years old to start tinkering with toys and building simple machines. Since 2012, her company GoldieBlox (No. 59 on the BI 100: The Creators) has sold more than 1 million sets of narrative-driven construction toys. Getting girls interested in engineering at an early age was an easy sell, Sterling told Business Insider in an interview. Changing attitudes about girls' capabilities in STEM, however, proved much harder."

"There has been a big push in computer-science education in the last few years. The UK has made it part of its national curriculum, President Obama has pledged $4 billion toward a national computer-science initiative and a slew of toys and games designed to teach kids how to code have come to market. Even Apple got into the spirit with the introduction of Swift Playgrounds, an iPad app that instructs kids on the basics of the company's Swift programming language. Today, Google detailed its own big investment in computer-science education. It's called Project Bloks, an open hardware platform that anyone can use to create physical coding experiences for kids."

"The child in the photo above just received the most amazing toy! It might have been a giant stuffed giraffe, or a truck, or a new game. However, the cardboard box is even more exciting. The child will eventually outgrow the giraffe or the truck because those toys can be only one thing -- but the box is timeless. The box can be a racecar, a submarine, a suit of armor, a castle, or a cave. We can learn a lot from children's infatuation with cardboard boxes. It shows us how much they want to shape and construct new things, how they long for the freedom to create. In fact, as illustrated by the phenomenon of Caine's Arcade, when students gain the freedom to explore, to learn independently, and to share their creations, they will astound us. Consider the fact that one boy's cardboard arcade inspired thousands from around the world to create and share their own inventions."

"The Maker Movement is a new trend based on old school traditions in which the philosophy of doing, building, and creating prevails over just simply buying. Instead of going to the toy store, people are learning how to design and 3D print their own toys. Instead of shopping for furniture, people are going to local community workshops like TechShop and building their own custom chairs and tables. The Maker Mentality creates a powerful paradigm shift by eliminating the separation between consumer and producer. By looking at the benefits and upsides of the Maker Movement and analyzing why it has reemerged, we can use it productively in the classroom by intertwining these new techniques with the classic methods such as lecture, reading, and so on."

"Hearing a child say they spent their school day playing with Lego may not go down well with parents. But these little bricks could become a fixture in maths lessons thanks to a new programme devised by the toy company. Primary schools have long used Lego informally to teach. However, this month Lego Education is launching a new programme, MoreToMaths, a global scheme especially designed to help teachers tackle key stage 1 maths on the national curriculum using the toys. The MoreToMaths kit, including lesson plans and teaching guides, costs £750 for a class of 30. While some may be sceptical about Lego's move into education - and the price that may deter state schools - many teachers have already found cost-effective ways to use Lego in lessons. We gathered these fun ideas from our teaching community."

"The Maker Movement is a new trend based on old school traditions in which the philosophy of doing, building, and creating prevails over just simply buying. Instead of going to the toy store, people are learning how to design and 3D print their own toys. Instead of shopping for furniture, people are going to local community workshops like TechShop and building their own custom chairs and tables. The Maker Mentality creates a powerful paradigm shift by eliminating the separation between consumer and producer. By looking at the benefits and upsides of the Maker Movement and analyzing why it has reemerged, we can use it productively in the classroom by intertwining these new techniques with the classic methods such as lecture, reading, and so on."

I have added many of these resources to the Flickr Toys and More page on the Literacy with ICT: IMYM Tutorials Wiki at http://joevans.pbwiki.com/Flickr+Toys+and+More

Have many of these already added to Flickr Toys and More at http://joevans.pbwiki.com/Flickr+Toys+and+More along with some ideas of curricular fits.

"Lego is phenomenal super-toy, which helps stimulate kids' creativity, imagination, as well as logical thinking. Yet, school teacher Alycia Zimmerman do not only use it as a toy, but also as a great aid to develop basic math skills among her young minds. Lego blocks, she finds, are good tool to explain fractions, squares and other mathematical concepts. "In the classroom, the tiny bricks are now my favorite possibility-packed math manipulative," she writes in an article for Scholastic that goes more into depth about these bricks' potential uses."

"Lego is a phenomenal children's toy. It's little wonder then that both adults and kids enjoy playing around with it. It can help stimulate your imagination, your creative abilities, and your logical thinking. In turn, it can be used not only as a toy, but also as a great aid to learning both in the classroom and at home. School teacher Alycia Zimmerman regularly uses Lego to help develop basic math skills among her pupils. Lego blocks, she finds, offer a great opportunity to explain fundamental math concepts and calculations in a way which is immediately understandable for young minds. So for those who can't find the right words or who find they haven't got the patience to help with their kid's math homework, here are a few examples which Alycia uses. Each and everyone of them is incredibly simple, but seriously effective."

"According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), employment in occupations related to STEM is projected to grow to more than 9 million between 2012 and 2022. And the Global Stem Alliance estimates that 75% of all jobs will require STEM expertise by 2018. SEE ALSO: 6 awesome ways to bring your kids' ideas to life with 3D printing Certainly that's a clear indication that STEM should be an integral part of school curriculums. Introducing these topics in an approachable way that both engages and educates kids, is possible without having to implement complex coding classes and HTML 101 in elementary school. Thanks to a slew of wildly innovative and imaginative toys out there - like the 11 below - kids can start developing the skills necessary for an increasingly digital world"

"Playing with toy cars is synonymous to almost everyone's childhood. In this instructable, i decided to re-live those memories by making a simplest toy car powered by just a DC motor and a 9v battery. This project is for kids who are entering the world of DIY and need a simple project to start. This car is a sure shot DIY project that will never fail even in the first attempt. In case you decide to make this World's simplest electric car, don't forget to share your wonderful experiences in the comments section below."

"Contrary to what you might think and hear, apps and screens aren't the best tools for kids to learn STEM concepts, even coding. Why? Innovation, pattern recognition, exploration, experimentation and creation underlie STEM principles. Kids need to manipulate tangible things. It's how they learn. While there are some great apps that supplement STEM learning, the best STEM activities for kids are blended ones -- the ones that require hands-on exploration, screens optional. Those that do require screens, like ones with coding apps, should augment the experience, not be the sole focus. Many of these toys and kits are designed for classroom use but are perfectly adaptable and suitable for home use, too, as my two kids, ages five and seven, will shout from the rooftops (supervised, don't worry). Check out these awesome blended learning STEM kits and toys. They'll have your little inventors ready to apply for their first patent in no time."

"Google's Data Arts Team came up with a series called "Virtual Art Sessions" that documents the Tilt Brush experience in a way so that people all over the world can see the actual virtual reality experience, even when watching through flat screens."

"The learn-to-code movement is aiming younger. MIT and partners, for example, recently released a free iPad app with its visual programming language ScratchJr., so kindergartners could use it to code stories and games even before knowing how to read. Vikas Gupta, a former Google executive who founded the startup Wonder Workshop (formerly called Play-i), has taken a slightly different path. "We learned that in order to make programming of interest to young children, it has to be a tangible product. It can't be just software," he told Co.Exist last year. Enter Dot and Dash-Wonder Workshop's two new robots that teach coding skills to children as young as five that are now being field tested in a few dozen elementary school classrooms nationally. And they are definitely tangible: Dash hears and responds to sounds, navigates around a room and avoid obstacles, and comes to life with sound and lights. He can even play the xylophone. Dot, on the other hand, doesn't have wheels and is meant to interact with Dash via Bluetooth and act as a controller. Both have their own customizable "personalities." On the back end, through four apps that control both robots, they are secretly teaching coding skills such as "event-based programming, sequencing, conditionals, and loops.""

"It's inevitable that the kids of Generation Z will be the most naturally tech-literate generation yet, but that won't happen through osmosis. They'll still need tools to get them there. Kids older than 10 or so are covered: In the past few years, smart companies like littleBits and Kano have helped pave the way toward make learning about circuitry and motherboards as fun as playing with Legos. But those products are still a bit sophisticated. Think of them like the grammar and syntax of computer science: great educational tools, so long as you can already grasp a few basic building blocks. To get those building blocks-let's call it the alphabet-younger kids can now turn to Hackaball, a ball that's also a computer, that gets programmed via an iPad app."

"Want to turn your kid into the next Ray Eames or Errol Morris? MoMA Design Store-that wondrous place brimming with all things sleek, modern, and covetable-has you covered. Here are seven tools for engendering the sort of creative play that does wonders for a growing mind."

Great everyday science activities...