Tufts CEEO has put together a student-facing constructopedia to help students build common mechanisms – like pulleys, hinges, and wheels – from common craft materials and recyclables.
Karkhana Samuha PEBL Toolkit
The PEBL Toolkit is an open source resource to bring playful engineering based learning to your classrooms and your homes. The toolkit aims to turn your classrooms and homes into playgrounds for exploration. Each of the 10 activities available in PEBL Toolkit is focused on creating a student-directed hands-on playful learning experience using engineering, scientific and mathematical concepts. These activities are designed to create joyful, actively engaging, meaningful, socially interactive and iterative experiences for students.
PEBL Tip Sheet
Our friends at WMSI created a tip sheet for folks interested in incorporating playful engineering-based learning (PEBL) in informal learning environments. Read about how WMSI put the tips into action in their playful summer camps.
Inspired by kids and grounded in research, Novel Engineering is an innovative approach to integrate engineering and literacy in elementary and middle school.Students use existing classroom literature – stories, novels, and expository texts – as the basis for engineering design challenges that help them identify problems, design realistic solutions, and engage in the Engineering Design Process while reinforcing their literacy skills.
ConnecTions in the Making
The “ConnecTions in the Making” project is funded by the NSF under the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program. This three-year project began in 2017 and has forged connections with community partners in Boston and Marlborough. Through this project, we have developed six community-connected, integrated science and engineering curriculum units for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade classrooms. In our units, students learn about an engineering problem in their community, like the construction of a new transit line in Boston, investigate science concepts related to the problem, and then design, build, test, iterate, and share their solutions with their classmates, other students and teachers from their school, and representatives of professional organizations, like the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).
The Community Based Engineering (CBE) approach introduces elementary grade students to engineering as a way of tackling problems that matter to them in their own lives. Our goal is to help educators help all children feel empowered as scientists and engineers by investigating and solving problems in their own communities.
