Week 6 K-12 Package – Inventing Matters!

This week’s K-12 package highlights invention once more as we join with Lemelson-MIT to announce their 2020 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize winners who are recognized for their technology-based inventions as graduate students or undergraduate teams in one of four prize categories: “Cure it!,” “Eat it!,” “Move it!,” and “Use it!.” To celebrate these awards, we have released another package of fun invention activities and videos called Inventing Matters!

This week, we want you to consider why inventing is important and how you can do it yourself. Take a look through the different categories to try out different activities related to language, music, food, shoe design, and more! We also encourage you to learn about the current and past collegiate winners and InvenTeam grant recipients whose inventions exemplify the prize categories and to use project-based learning activities to find that opportunities for invention are everywhere!

Don’t forget that you can share your invention ideas using our forums or on social media using #MITFullSTEAM (with parent permission).

Have fun inventing!

Week 5 K-12 Package – The World Around Us

Come wonder with us! This week we have a collection of ideas and questions that we’ve collected about everyday things. What does morning taste like? What sounds make you smile? What do your favorite pair of shoes feel like when they are on your feet? What does the light look like at different times during the day? What is one smell that makes you worry?

We encourage you to spend this week thinking about the questions you have about your surroundings, the Earth and sky, and about yourself! What observations can you make about the world around you? Can you find something in or around your home that you think is special or unique? How would you demonstrate to someone else what you’ve picked?

How many questions about our world can you come up with after a week of making observations? We can’t wait to see what you discover and hope that you will share your observation journey using either our forums or on social media using #MITFullSTEAM (with parent permission).

Week 4 K-12 Package Released – Music and Sound

The Edgerton Center K-12 Maker team is creating Week 4, Making Music and Sounds for release Monday April 13.

In this open-ended exploration of sound and music, students will listen and investigate, tinker and make noise, and turn sound into music with their own instrument. Learning like this happens best in a community, and we are providing a moderated forum where students can share and enjoy noisy compositions and musical creations from the community.  Get a taste of our projects – watch the Make a Kitchen Symphony video

The open-ended projects are intended to take a little pressure off of parents, give kids permission to learn through play, and let learners spend more time digging into the favorite parts of the project. Hopefully, adults will get in on the joy of making noise.

We get that there are many families who don’t have access to online resources, and will not be able to access this curriculum.  These materials will continue to be available when we return to our schools and educators can use them in face-to-face activities.

Upcoming Webinar on Remote Learning Guidance

MIT’s Teaching Systems Lab invites you to an upcoming webinar about their recent report: Remote Learning Guidance from State Education Agencies: A First Look. When: April 16, 3pm Eastern Presenter:  Justin Reich, Asst. Professor at MIT and director of the Teaching Systems Lab Free Registration: https://mit.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RCFT407DTja0zELxJ4QJYw
All registrants will receive a recording link after the webinar. 
In the webinar, they’ll discuss:

  • Relevant research on digital divides, virtual schooling, and education in emergencies
  • Findings from an analysis of guidance published by the 50 U.S. state education agencies
  • Strategies for online and non-digital remote learning
  • Recommendations for states, schools, districts, and educators for extended school closures

If you have questions in advance, please email them to jreich@mit.edu, and they’ll try to address them during the presentation and Q&A. 

New Feature – Teaching, Learning, Parenting and Gaming

We have introduced a new featured area of our K-12 resources on Teaching, Learning, Parenting and Gaming.

Do you have kids who are at home playing video games?  Do you worry about it being “a waste time”?  Video games can actually lead to great learning.  We are making a podcast series and video game recommendations available to make sure that you are prepared to support your child as they learn through games.  

You can find the main page here, which includes our video podcast series and a list of games to think about.

Week 3 Package Released – Exploring and Living in Outer Space

We are happy to announce that the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) has created a Package for Full STEAM Ahead! The Package offers a number of learning prompts to dive into SEI’s research endeavors, from CubeSats to space food to lunar exploration! Many of these activity prompts are perfect for family learning, so we encourage working together to explore space hands-on! If you have questions in your adventures, you can post them on the package’s online forum. There will even be a Question and Answer session from the group, so please post your questions in the forum. Happy Exploring!

Justin Reich’s Tips for Transitioning to Teaching Online and Remote

Justin Reich from MIT’s Teaching Systems Lab (tsl.mit.edu) has been working with teachers and administrators to help schools innovate and provide high quality education for all students. His work is particularly germane in the time of COVID-19 when so many schools are having to abruptly and radically shift their practices.

He sat down to provide the community with “Five Tips for Transitioning to Online and Remote Teaching” in this video:

The Teaching Systems Lab has its own page at tsl.mit.edu/covid19 with links to new teachlabpodcast.com episodes and to their new report on remote learning guidance from the 50 US state education agencies. They also have an open dataset with links to the guidance, and their analyses. 

Also check out Justin’s recent JWEL session on “Online Learning in the Age of COVID-19“.

We hope you find these resources helpful.