The latest news on afterschool engineering curricula from Engineering is Elementary® (EiE) at the Museum of Science, Boston.
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Spring 2015

The latest news on afterschool engineering curricula from Engineering is Elementary® (EiE) at the Museum of Science, Boston.

Get Outside and Engineer

Hi Educator!

It's finally spring at our headquarters! Time to engineer!

Spring has sprung at our Boston headquarters so we can finally put away our winter jackets and get outside and engineer. We have plenty of updates to share, including a major gift announcement that supports the creation of new Engineering Adventures (EA) units and Engineering Everywhere (EE) resources, a preview of two upcoming EE units, a behind-the-scenes look at an exciting video project, educator tips, and more.

We always love to hear from educators near and far. Please contact us if you have questions or comments you’d like to share!

Coming in June - Two New Engineering Everywhere Units

The team that brought you Don’t Runoff: Engineering an Urban Landscape and Food for Thought: Engineering Ice Cream will release two new curriculum units in June. These units feature hands-on activities specifically designed for middle school-aged youths in afterschool and camp programs. Each activity engages youths in real-world engineering problems using the engineering design process. For example, in Plants to Plastics: Engineering Bioplastics, youths will use their chemical engineering skills to tackle the plastic pollution problem, learning one possible solution: biodegradable plastics. In It’s About Time: Engineering Timers, youths will take on a mechanical engineering challenge and design different technologies to track the passage of time.

Plants to Plastics: Engineering BioplasticsIt’s About Time: Engineering Timers

Even when school’s out for the summer, engineering is still in! Learn more about Engineering Everywhere and how to download our FREE curriculum units by visiting our website. Make sure to check back in June for the chemical and mechanical engineering units mentioned above.

India's Tips and Tricks
It can be a challenge to organize all of the materials you need for engineering activities. Youths especially can feel overwhelmed if there are too many materials to choose from or they can’t easily see all the options they have. Here are a few easy steps you can take to manage those materials and shift the focus to the exciting part: creating innovative solutions to engineering challenges.
  1. Lay out all the necessary materials for your unit a few days in advance and get familiar with them. This will give you a sense for how the components of a kit work together.
  2. Divide items up by activity and set them aside to be placed on a designated “Materials Table.” Keep the Materials Table neat and organized so youths have a reliable place to pick up the supplies they need for each challenge. This will allow them to work more effectively on their engineering.
Do you have any tips or tricks you’d like to share with fellow educators? Let us know on our website for a chance to be featured in an upcoming edition of this newsletter.
Museum of Science Receives $5 Million Gift from the Gordon Foundation

Last month, the Museum of Science, Boston announced a $5 million gift from The Gordon Foundation. The gift directly supports the Museum’s ability to transform engineering and technology education across the United States. Click here to read the full press release.

A portion of the gift will allow Engineering Adventures and Engineering Everywhere to create new units and resources for afterschool and camp programs. We’ll keep you informed as we continue to develop these new materials.

Behind the Scenes: New EE Video Project

Engineering Everywhere is working on an exciting new video project. Our team is filming six new videos that set the scene for our new EE units. Each short video will shine a spotlight on real engineers using the engineering design process. We’ll take you inside a clock factory, visit a bioplastics development and test center, and check out the latest research at a virology lab.

Filming the new video for It’s About Time: Engineering Timers

Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at our team filming a video for the upcoming EE unit It’s About Time: Engineering Timers. Videographer Kristyn Ulanday is shooting footage of the Foucault Pendulum in the lobby of the Museum of Science, Boston. You’ll be able to view the new videos when the new EE units are released later this year.

Thank You for Your Support

We would like to thank all the afterschool and camp providers who applied to be part of our latest pilot program for the EA curriculum. We received over 700 applications from all over the United States and internationally from locations including Italy, Ireland, Turkey, Thailand, Singapore, and Nigeria.

We always welcome feedback from educators about what’s working and not working when you use one of our units. Please email us your thoughts and suggestions so we can consider them for future revisions to the curriculum. We could not produce quality, research-tested engineering activities without the support of the OST community. Thank you!

Research Report: Middle School Curriculum is Effective

During development of our EE units, we asked youths at pilot test sites to reflect on their changing attitudes toward engineering. Across the country, 923 youths completed our Engineering Interest & Attitudes survey. In the survey, we presented kids with several statements and asked them about their level of agreement with the statement both before the unit and after the unit ended. The questions address four different topics:

  • the importance of engineering as a discipline and the engineering design process
  • their personal desire to learn more about engineering
  • their personal enjoyment of and interest in engineering
  • the value of engineering to society in general

For every one of EE’s ten units, youths showed statistically significant growth on questions about these four aspects of engineering attitudes. Our upcoming units Plants to Plastics: Engineering Bioplastics and It's About Time: Engineering Timers, are no exception--the graph below presents data from these pilot tests. For both units, youths showed significantly positive changes in attitudes about the importance of engineering and how much they enjoy engineering.

Youths showed significantly positive changes in attitudes about the importance of engineering and how much they enjoy engineering.

Read the full Engineering Everywhere evaluation report on our research page.