GPS in STEM Education

There is an interesting Web site that deals with science teaching at all grade levels called The Science Spot at the URL: http://sciencespot.net. This site offers much to science and STEM teachers. I was looking for ideas to use GPS in the classroom and for Boy Scouts. I found that the Science Spot had a number of activities using GPS on the following Web page: http://sciencespot.net/Pages/classgpslsn.html. This site has a lot to offer in all areas of science primarily at the middle grades level, but with lessons at for other grade levels as well. Enjoy!

Information about Engineering

Educators and students interested in engineering need to be able to find information about schools, programs, careers, trends, and more. Here are several sites I have found that are valuable in getting information about any aspect of engineering. They may lead you to places and ideas you have never dreamed of. Enjoy!
http://www.engineering.com/
http://www.discoverengineering.org/
http://www.asee.org/
http://vlib.org/Engineering
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm
http://www.tryengineering.org/
http://www.engineeringsights.org/
http://www.engineershandbook.com/index.htm
http://www.engineeringedu.com/competitions.html

Fuel Our Future Now from Discovery Education

An excellent source of STEM instructional materials can be found at Discovery Education (http://discoveryeducation.com/). The Fuel Our Future Now set of new STEM activities and competitions is now available for elementary, middle and high school grade levels at the Fuel Our Future Now Web site (http://www.fuelourfuturenow.com/). Teachers, students and parents can access activities, lesson plans, videos, virtual labs and competitions from this site. Take a look at all the activities that deal with transportation, energy and more.

NASA Engineering Design Challenges

NASA has a number of interesting design challenges at the the URL: http://edc.nasa.gov/ Some of them can be done in one day while others take longer. We did the Thermal Protection System (heat shield) challenge in our Summer Space Science Camp and the students really liked the activity. NASA has students and teacher handouts that can be printed on the challenges page at the URL: http://edc.nasa.gov/challenge.html
I hope you enjoy these STEM activities with your class!