iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

A heads up: Dyson has "created 44 engineering and science activities for children to try out while at home during the coronavirus pandemic, from making a balloon-powered car to building a bridge from spaghetti," writes the Dezeen website. They go on to add: "Comprised of 22 science tasks and 22 engineering activities, the Challenge Cards can be completed by children using common household items such as eggs, string and balloons." You can also find a related playlist of videos on YouTube, one of which appears above.

What kid wouldn’t want to play with candy! Our gumdrop bridge building STEM project is perfect using up those sweets that you might have hanging around the house. Or it simply makes a fun afternoon activity to keep everyone busy. Add a challenge! Have your kids try out their gumdrop bridge building skills.

After witnessing the increasing number of homeless people in their community, a team of high school girls with no previous DIY experience joined forces to find a solution. It took a year, and over the weekend, they presented their invention at MIT’s young inventors conference.

The twelve girls attend San Fernando High School, which is 20 miles outside of Los Angeles. According to a story on Mashable, homelessness in the area increased 36% last year.

A successful engineer constantly searches for new information and techniques to employ more efficient and economic designs. Keeping up with the times used to require constant schooling and endless hours spent at university libraries searching through countless papers. Today, through the rise of the internet, the information to improve methods and technologies has never been so accessible. Now, maintaining a sharp, creative mind requires nothing more than clicking away through the endless archives on the internet. Listed below are the most useful engineering websites that every engineer should have at their disposal – both in and out of school.

As STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) curriculum grows in popularity, more schools are adding engineering classes. Students in elementary school through high school are enjoying the benefits of being exposed to engineering in the classroom.

As Teach Engineering explains, “Research around effective learning in K-12 classrooms demonstrates that an engineering approach to identifying and solving problems is valuable across all disciplines.” As you teach engineering, consider adding these seven must have engineering apps and tools to your professional toolbox:

Engineering has been getting a lot of attention because of its real-world applications and clear job prospects, but learning to think like an engineer could be useful no matter what students decide to pursue for work. At Science Leadership Academy, a public magnet school in Philadelphia, all ninth-graders take a one-semester introduction-to-engineering course to help them learn how to tackle big projects. That’s a skill they will need in every high school class going forward at this project-based, inquiry-centered school.

For some women, enrolling in an engineering course is like running a psychological gauntlet. If they dodge overt problems like sexual harassment, sexist jokes, or poor treatment from professors, they often still have to evade subtler obstacles like the implicit tendency to see engineering as a male discipline. It’s no wonder women in the U.S. hold just 13 to 22 percent of the doctorates in engineering, compared to an already-low 33 percent in the sciences as a whole.

Nilanjana Dasgupta, from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, thinks that mentors—people who can give advice, share experiences, or make social connections—can dismantle the gauntlet, and help young women to find their place in an often hostile field.