eGFI- Dream Up the Future!

      eGFI (Engineering, Go For It!) is an amazing website for both students and educators, that is committed to providing and enhancing knowledge related to K-12 STEM education. Both students and educators can sign up for monthly newsletters which come to their e-mail. Each newsletter contains current events/news related to STEM topics, lesson plans and classroom activities (for teachers), activities that students can complete at home, and many links to local presentations and conventions that they may like to attend. 
     
eGFI is also a great resource for learning about the different kinds of engineering and the types of careers students can get into if they choose to pursue that field. I strongly recommend checking out this site. It is a great place to get valuable information to begin or continue your journey toward being a STEM leader! So click the link below and Go For It!

Link to eGFI: http://www.egfi-k12.org/

Clickers

Many students feel intimidated to answer in front of the whole classroom in fear of being wrong and being teased at by their peers, therefore they do not participate much. Due to such situations teachers end up not knowing what students know, what their misconceptions are, and what they need to discuss more. But with Clickers, this problem can now be solved. Clickers help teachers of all age groups, even professors, to get a better understanding of what their students know and understand and what they don't understand before closing a unit without putting anyone on the spot. Clickers are designed to give all students a voice to show their teachers their understanding on all subjects without putting pressure on them of having wrong answers. Teachers provide all students with individual Clickers and then will post multiple choice questions for the whole class, in which the students will choose the answers with their Clickers anonymously. The Clickers have A, B, C, D, and E, buttons that allow students to choose the answer they believe is correct. The teacher then receives the answers that the students chose and will see how many students answered correctly and incorrectly. With such results, teachers will see what misconceptions the students have about a certain subject and what they need to cover more. Also, student participation will increase.

Max and the Magic Marker App

http://maxandthemagicmarker.com

Just when you think electronics are "bad" for kids, everything turns the other way around. There are limits when using these electronics that include cell phones, laptops/computers, IPads/IPods, video games, etc. We all feel guilty when us adults, let alone kids, spend more time on our own electronics from the time we actually need. But what kids come to you with educational games on an IPad and you can't stop them. Even more, what if they find a STEM game, will you actually not allow them to play? I introduce to you the app, Max and the Magic Marker. This app can be downloaded from the app store to IPads which can be used in classrooms. This app is a fun physics-based game that allows kids to become in control of Max (the boy that has to run through obstacles) and help Max through these obstacles by drawing bridges, parachutes, balances, lines, circles and many other creative ways students can think of. Students are building through a 2 dimension platform. There are puzzle levels that come with challenges, secrets and rewards in each level which gets kids encouraged to keep on going. This app is a great way to get students thinking of what they have to do and how they will complete their task. This website provides more details about the app itself and a few questions that can be answered. So how is that for electronic handeling? Limit time usage, not the educational part!

Kinetic City

Kinetic City is a fun, creative, science standard based interactive website. It is very user friendly! This resource is geared toward grades 3-5 and has over 100 different activities and challenges for students to complete. The site separates these activities into specific categories: hands on demonstrations & experiments, writing and language arts, Internet research, art projects, interactive games, and physical activities. The site is also a  resource that collaborates with an after school program. If you click on the educators tab on the left side of the screen it provides more information on how to start a club, guides and resources. When you create a club it accomodates up to 30 students. The site can also be used on its own.

http://www.kineticcity.com/ 

Learning Resources Stem Force and Motion Activity Set

Students have a chance to use this kit to learn and experiment with gravity, friction, inertia and push/pull to name a few while using a range of objects to test with.  This kit will get students to think about multiple types of skills such as coding, engineering, problem solving, and critical thinking to name a few.  In the class this could be a issue if you tried to do it with each student individual but as a separate activity that they could do during say free time it would be extremely helpful since it gives them a  chance to be creative while still learning.  The main reason I wouldn’t recommend using this as a whole class activity or even with multiple students using it at once is because this kit promotes and encourages creativity and for students to try new things which is going to happen less if the students have their friends who are doing it one way and then they either brag about how theirs work or become upset that it didn’t and yell at the person who did that they were bragging.  By doing it with either smaller groups—2-3 kids—or individually students are given more  of a chance to test things that they might not otherwise test or try.

Blog 2 Hummingbird Robotics - Carrie Maloziec

Hummingbird Robotics Kit         

Arts, Crafts, Robots!

The Hummingbird Robotics Kit is a spin-off product of Carnegie Mellon's CREATE lab. Hummingbird is designed to enable engineering and robotics activities for ages 13 and up (8 with adult supervision) that involve the making of robots, kinetic sculptures, and animatronics built out of a combination of kit parts and crafting materials. This kit helps student with all aspects of creating a robot. The website has a lot of pictures of different designed robots. The kit comes with instructions that are easy to use software for programming. Hummingbird provides a great way to introduce kids to robotics and engineering with construction materials that they are already familiar with. At the same time, Hummingbird continues to provide new challenges by allowing programming in the Arduino environment, Python, Java, and Processing, and by supporting Raspberry Pi.