STEM Goodies Galore

One of the great things about attending science conferences or festivals is all the people you meet and ideas you can find. This past month was truly a gold mine for us and we are excited to share ideas we gathered at NSTA in Boston and at the US Science and Engineering Festival in DC. We are going to dump our bag of goodies that we gathered on the table and list for you some of the cool stuff that we found and that you might want to investigate for your classroom. • The Planetary Society has a newspaper called Planetary Society Kids. Bill Nye is head of this society so you know that things they produce are going to be creative and good. Their website is at http://www.planetary.org/explore/for-kids/ • Through My Window is a multi media educational website, funded by NSF, filled with mysteries, explorations, stories and adventures about STEM and engineering. www.Throughmywindow.org • Paper Roller Coasters has kits and templates to make your own marble roller coasters out of paper. There are lots of creative ideas to design a really interesting coaster. www.paperrollercoasters.com • Tau Beta Pi, the engineering Honor Society, has developed a program for grades K-12. They provide teacher training, parent workshops, and student modules. TBPMindSET@tbp.org • City Project has lesson plans for 3-D printers that looked very interesting. Cityproject.com • Loralee Leavitt has written a food themed science book. Candy Experiments is a book and website with experiments that revolve around candy. That should light up a few kid’s eyes. www.candyexperiments.com • The US Department of Agriculture has published several student booklets on food safety that are great! Contact Bridgette.Keefe@fsis.usda.gov to have a set sent to your classroom. • The Engineering Place from North Carolina State University is doing great things for children’s engineering. They provide outreach programs and lessons. To learn more visit: www.engr.ncsu.edu/theengineeringplace • STEM videos are being produced at MIT and can be downloaded at http://k12videos.mit.edu The ones we viewed were awesome. • Tufts University has STEM literature lessons on their site. www.novelengineering.com • The award winning Little Bits company has electrical modules that fit together to create powerful and interesting electronic projects. For educational discounts contact education@littleBits.cc If you ever get a chance to go to a STEM conference or festival, GO! We guarantee you will leave with goodies galore and tons of inspiration.