by Barbara Bratzel

Dr E’s challenges encourage children to design creative solutions to open-ended problems and share their creations with other children around the world. The two Dr. E’s websites, Dr. E’s MINDSTORMS Challenges and Dr. E’s WeDo Challenges, post a new challenge each month. Children work on their creations during the month, then share photos and video of them on the Dr. E’s websites.  The Dr. E’s sites have almost eight hundred registered users from around the world, representing every continent but Antarctica. Entries to challenges have spanned the globe as well. Last month’s joint challenge, Aviary, received entries from Australia, Chile, Poland, Romania, Spain, and the United States.

Dr. E’s Aviary houses birds of many feathers. Entries to the WeDo site included a grain-eating toucan

and a crazily-spinning duck.

The MINDSTORMS site attracted a number of sophisticated entries: An EV3ird with movements that are governed by a sequence of button pushes,

a dodo bird that uses an IR sensor to stay in its habitat,

and a robotic peacock that spreads its hand-painted feathers.