Announcing a new grant from NASA, tips and tricks to help you run engaging engineering activities, upcoming conferences, and more.
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Winter 2016

Stay Inside and Engineer

Greetings Educator,

When the temperature drops outside, it’s a great opportunity to bring students indoors where it’s warm and engage them in challenging engineering activities.

We have a lot of news to share in this edition of the Afterschool Engineering Update, including the announcement of an exciting new grant from NASA, some tips and tricks to help you run engaging engineering activities, information on where you can meet members of our curriculum team this upcoming conference season, and more.

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Tell us how you're using Engineering Adventures or Engineering Everywhere in your afterschool program. Share your story!
Announcement of NASA PLANETS Grant
At the PLANETS launch meeting at NAU in Jan. 2016. From left to right: Martha Davis, Christine Cunningham (representing EiE), Joëlle Clark, Lori Rubino-Hare (representing NAU).

At the PLANETS launch meeting at NAU in Jan. 2016. From left to right: Martha Davis, Christine Cunningham (representing EiE), Joëlle Clark, Lori Rubino-Hare (representing NAU).

Over the next five years, through a $1.3 million sub-award to EiE's home institution the Museum of Science, Boston, our curriculum developers will help to create and disseminate three new afterschool curriculum units and conduct research to evaluate curriculum effectiveness. The project will also create professional development workshops for afterschool educators.This past fall, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate made awards to 27 institutions for new initiatives to engage learners with NASA science. One is a $3.4 million grant to Northern Arizona University's Center for Science Teaching and Learning (CSTL) to create space-themed educational resources for out-of-school-time programs. We're thrilled to share that EiE is part of this initiative, which is called PLANETS (Planetary Learning that Advances the Nexus of Engineering, Technology, and Science).

The PLANETS project held its launch meeting last month in Flagstaff; Christine Cunningham, EiE's executive director, and Martha Davis, EiE's director of curriculum development, were in attendance. Now our team is digging into the work of designing new activities that will inspire the next generation of explorers in the STEM fields.

Want to learn more about this exciting new initiative? Check out the article in our blog.

Meet Members of Our Team at an Upcoming Conference
Beyond School Hours Conference

Our curriculum team will visit several upcoming conferences to talk to educators about our out-of-school-time curriculum offerings. We will first visit the Beyond School Hours Conference in Dallas, Texas from March 9th to the 12th. We will lead four workshops designed to empower you to lead quality engineering challenges for your elementary and middle school afterschool students. After that, our team will attend the National Science Teachers Association Conference in Nashville, Tennessee from March 31st to April 3rd.

If you are attending either conference, please make sure to stop by our exhibit hall booth to say hello. We will be at booth #316 at BSH and #513 at NSTA. We are looking forward to connecting with you there!

To learn more about where we will be presenting this spring, visit the Upcoming Conferences and Events section of our website.

India and Jacob

India’s Tips and Tricks

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Each Engineering Adventures and Engineering Everywhere unit culminates with an "Engineering Showcase." It's a great opportunity for kids to share their engineering accomplishments with others.

You can build excitement for the Showcase by inviting family members and friends to the event. Alternatively, consider inviting younger students from your site to sit in the audience. Encourage your students to take on the role of the educator and act as mentors by presenting their work and teaching their younger peers about the Engineering Design Process. You may be surprised by how well your students take to this new role!

Get Ready for National Engineers Week

Countdown to National Engineers WeekNational Engineers Week is February 21st through the 27th. Until then, we’re counting down and sharing a great new engineering resource every day.

Today, we’re featuring a blog post that was written for Education Week by two of our out-of-school-time curriculum developers. The piece discusses the intersection of engineering challenges and the development of 21st century skills, such as creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication.

For more on #eweek2016, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest and join in the conversation!

Thank You, Pilot Sites!
Students at Patrick Rosendale’s afterschool program at the Boroughs Family Branch YMCA in Westborough, MA design an avalanche protection system as part of a pilot test of an upcoming EA unit.

Students at Patrick Rosendale’s afterschool program at the Boroughs Family Branch YMCA in Westborough, MA design an avalanche protection system as part of a pilot test of an upcoming EA unit.

We want to thank the educators from 12 states who were selected this past fall to pilot test one of three upcoming Engineering Adventures units. We gathered a lot of useful data from your efforts, and we are currently revising those units to make the activities more effective.

Our next round of pilot tests will take place this summer. If you would like to apply, stay tuned for an application in your inbox this spring. If you know of another educator who would be interested in applying, have them subscribe to this newsletter!

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

@india_and_jacob on Instagram
Instagram_Icon_Large.png Engineering Adventures’s travelling duo, India and Jacob, are now on Instagram! Follow along as they share photos of the amazing examples of engineering and clever technologies that they encounter as they trek across the globe. Follow, #regram, and connect with us!
Free Video Resources Enrich Your Engineering Adventures Experience

We are constantly adding new resources to our website to enrich your Engineering Adventures experience.

All of our Engineering Everywhere units offer context-setting videos to introduce the challenge and the field of engineering that youth will be investigating. But did you know that several of our Engineering Adventures units have informational context-setting videos as well?

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In this video for the unit Hop to It: Safe Removal of Invasive Species, India and Jacob unwittingly unleash an invasive species of toad into the wilderness of New Zealand. They speak to “cane toad busters” and researchers from Australia to learn more about this threat.

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Next, in this video for the unit Bubble Bonanza: Engineering Bubble Wands, bubble artist Keith Johnson shares his secrets for blowing all kinds of bubbles. Best of all, all of the questions come from real kids!

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Finally, in this video for the unit Shake Things Up: Engineering Earthquake Resistant Buildings, Andre Filiatrault, earthquake engineer at the University of Buffalo, shows off his giant shake table and shares tips for creating earthquake-resistant buildings. As with the video above, all of the questions come from real kids!