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"This is a collection of project-based engineering lessons for kids. Project-based learning allows students to control the direction and pace of their learning. Activities that promote investigation, critical thinking, and hands-on subject matter are also central to project-based learning. These project-based lessons focus on basic principles of physics, structural, and mechanical engineering. Physical models are built from a similar set of materials that can be easily sourced online (links are provided in-lesson). All of the project plans in this collection are designed to be used in an after school enrichment setting, though you may use and modify these ideas for other not-for-profit purposes provided you cite The Workshop for Young Engineers. This is a growing and improving collection of lesson plans. Please comment to share your ideas to improve lessons and photos of your designs."

"Code.org is a non-profit foundation dedicated to growing computer programming education. Founded by two brothers, Hadi Partovi and Ali Partovi, their vision is that every student in every school has the opportunity to learn how to code. Code.org want computer science and computer programming to be part of the core curriculum in education, alongside other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, such as biology, physics, chemistry and algebra."

"Today's Best Educational Apps for Kids list is Natual and Animal Science Apps for Kindergarden and Early Elementary School Kids (age 6 to 10). There is another list of science apps for this age group but on other subjects, such as astronomy, physics, or chemistry. For this other science list, you can visit an earlier post HERE. Please add your favorite nature and animal science apps in the comment area. I will update the list periodically. I"

"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."

"16Hertz, an educational electronics company based in New York City announces the release of their illustrated, graphic-novel style guide, "The Illustrated Arduino". The guide is over 75 pages long, and contains hundreds of hand-drawn illustrations that take the readers through getting up-and-running with electronics prototyping and Arduino programming.   Written by career educators and makers, Aditya Kumarakrishnan and Adiel Fernandez, "The Illustrated Arduino" is a comprehensive guide created to be easily accessible to readers of all experience levels looking for a way to jump into the world of microcontrollers. When the duo dove into the Arduino community, they had a difficult time finding a comprehensive, clear guidebook for beginners. Having taught programming, physical computing and design to students of all ages from middle schools to universities, they sought out to create a guide that is easy-to-follow, great to look at all while still being rigorous. "We set out to create the most beautiful, user-friendly, pedagogically sound and rigorous guide book for the Arduino in the world", says Aditya. They've released the guide under a Creative Commons license, encouraging the larger community to share and use its content freel"

"The value of technology, as Apple Education states, is in its empowering character, when individuals use it to extend their physical and cognitive limitations and transform their learning. Technology opens a world of limitless learning possibilities for persons with learning difficulties and in today's post we are featuring some of the important features embedded in iPad that can help complement learners' vision, hearing, motor skills, and literacy. To access these assistive features head over to your iPad home screen and click on settings icon, next click on General and select Accessibility and then turn on the features you are interested in. Some of the assistive features as lied out in Apple's guide include:"

"Here is another of our popular visuals we published in 2017. The visual features some good educational web tools and websites to help you in your teaching. We arranged these resources into the following content areas: science, math, language arts, history, art, physics, music, and social studies. A printable PDF of this infographic is available for free from this page."

"What are the real benefits of a maker-centered approach to learning? It's often described as a way to incubate STEM skills or drive technical innovation - and it is probably both of these. But as a new report from Project Zero's Agency by Design concludes, the real value of maker education has more to do with building character than with building the next industrial revolution.  "

"Augmented reality is a new technology with some promising potential for education. The basic premise behind augmented reality is the extension of the physical world to include components of the digitally virtual world. According to Drew Minock, Co-Author of Two Guys and Some iPads , augmented reality is :"

"As the Maker Movement has gained steams schools and educators alike have begun to incorporate makerspaces as exploratory centers for students to invent, tinker, create, and make to learn.  A makerspace can best be defined as a physical place where students can create real-world products/projects using real-world tools.  In 2013 I was fortunate enough to hire media specialist/teacher librarian Laura Fleming, who took the initiative to create a makerspace in our school.  Through her work I discovered some guiding principles that might just help you begin to create a makerspace in your school or integrate the process of making across the curriculum.  It is first important to understand three underlying qualities that essential in ensuring that students make to learn:"

The posting below looks at a new approach to evaluating teaching. It is by Carl Wieman a professor of physics and of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He is the founder of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) at the University of British Columbia and the Science Education Initiative at the University of Colorado. He is a Nobel Laureate in Physics and served as the Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Cwieman@stanford.edu, 650 - 497-3491. The posting is a condensed version of a substantially longer article that appeared in the January, 2015 issue of Change Magazine. http://www.changemag.org Regards, Rick Reis

Through any lens schools are complex places. A melting pot of human, social, political, economic, technological, physical and philosophical tensions. At once the stronghold of our cultural traditions and facilitators of our future wellbeing, schools serve as pillars of stability constructed at the event horizon between our now and our tomorrow. Perhaps at this point in time more than ever is this tension between the role that schools play in indoctrinating our youth into the ways of society at odds with the imperative to prepare them for their futures.