In this activity, students assume the role of a team of architects that has been commissioned to build a solar house containing both active and passive solar components. First, they must design the house and then build a model. The model is tested to determine how well it utilizes solar energy.

12.000 Solving Complex Problems is designed to provide students the opportunity to work as part of a team to propose solutions to a complex problem that requires an interdisciplinary approach. For the students of the class of 2013, 12.000 will revolve around the issues associated with what we can and must do about the steadily increasing amounts CO{{< sub "2â€ >}} in Earth’s atmosphere. 12.000 is a core course for the MIT Terrascope freshman learning community. Each year’s class explores a different problem in detail through the study of complementary case histories and the development of creative solution strategies. It includes training in Web site development, effective written and oral communication, and team building. Initially developed with major financial support from the d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education, 12.000 is designed to enhance the freshman experience by helping students develop contexts for other subjects in the sciences and humanities, and by helping them to establish learning communities that include upperclassmen, faculty, MIT alumni, and professionals in science and engineering fields.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students study a disease outbreak and the investigation that followed to understand the role that public health workers play in protecting the communities they serve.

Students will learn about what causes sounds in this lesson plan. They will learn they are caused by vibrations as well as build a fun musical instrument of their own.

This landscape and environmental planning workshop investigates and propose a framework for the enhancement, development and preservation of the natural and cultural landscape of the Cardener River Corridor in Catalunya Spain. The workshop is carried out in conjunction with the Polytechnic University of Catalunya, and the Barcelona Provincial Council (DiputaciĚ_ de Barcelona).

This video segment from IdahoPTV's D4K explains and gives examples of the 4 states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.

Research and development scientists at Bell Laboratories introduced a device in 1947 that heralded a technological revolution with widespread consequences for consumers, industry, and the armed forces: the tiny transistor. Replacing the vacuum tube as the basic component for a host of electronic products, this semi-conductor solid-state device and such later developments in electronics as the integrated circuit, lasers, fiber optics, and digitization techniques, allowed the miniaturization of conveniences as with radios and computers, and made possible many aspects of present-day life and work--from telecommunications to automated factory operations. The following Collier's article from 1954, by renowned World War II reporter and novelist Cornelius Ryan, dubbed the new science "Stereatronics" and predicted revolutionary changes in the offing. Though the name did not survive the times in which it was coined, the electronics industry it described would soon become the largest manufacturing industry in the United States.

In this video profile produced for Teachers' Domain, meet conservationist Steve MacLean, an Inupiaq from Barrow, Alaska, who works to preserve the health of the Bering Sea ecosystem.

Provides an integrated approach to understanding the practice of engineering in the real world. Students research the life cycle of a major engineering project, new technology, or startup company from multiple perspectives: technical, economic, political, cultural. Emphasis on analyzing engineering artifacts, understanding documentation, framing logical arguments, communicating effectively, and working in teams.

During the "Gilded Age" of the 1880s and 1890s, the influence of large-scale corporations dominated not just the U.S. Congress but also the courts. Nowhere was this more evident than in the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the 1886 Wabash case, excerpted below. With Wabash, the Court overturned its 1879 decision ( Munn v. Illinois ) allowing states to regulate railroads. Perverting the original intent of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court decreed that corporations were legally "persons" entitled to the Amendment's protections. (Just three years earlier, the Court had ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional on the basis that the Fourteenth Amendment was binding only on states, not individuals, thereby severely jeopardizing the very rights--of freed slaves--the amendment was explicitly designed to protect.) The Wabash case barred states from regulating interstate commerce, asserting that only the federal government could do so. In 1887, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, which railroad barons found more appealing than the more restrictive state laws.

In this lesson designed to enhance literacy skills, students learn about the varied physical and behavioral adaptations that animals rely on to help them survive changing environmental conditions, such as the arrival of winter.

This resource bank has been designed for educators, education planners and practitioners to bring the 17 UN Sustainable DevelopmentGoals into classrooms. It offers hundreds of pedagogical ideas for classroom activities and multimedia resources detailing how best to integrate ESD into teaching and learning, from early childhood care through secondary education.

Explore what an earthquake might do to a house built on a landfill in this sweet STEM activity. Detailed instructions and the science behind the activity can...

This video segment adapted from NOVA reveals how junk DNA helped solve an evolutionary mystery: Why do certain species of fruit flies have wing spots while others don't?

Our linked subjects are (1) the historical process by which the meaning of technology has been constructed, and (2) the concurrent transformation of the environment. To explain the emergence of technology as a pivotal word (and concept) in contemporary public discourse, we will examine responses--chiefly political and literary--to the development of the mechanic arts, and to the linked social, cultural, and ecological transformation of 19th- and 20th-century American society, culture, and landscape.

Today many people assume that technological change is the major factor in historical change and that it tends to lead to historical progress. This class turns these assumptions into a question "what is the role of technology in history?" by focusing on four key historical transitions: the human revolution (the emergence of humans as a history-making species), the Neolithic Revolution (the emergence of agriculture-based civilizations); the great leap in productivity (also known as the industrial revolution), and the great acceleration that has come with the rise of human empire on the planet. These topics are studied through a mix of textbook reading (David Christian's Maps of Time"), supplementary readings (ranging from Auel, "The Clan of the Cave Bear" to Hersey, "Hiroshima"), illustrated lectures, class discussions, guest lectures/discussions, short "problem paper" assignments, and a final project defined by the student. Because MIT is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2011, this version of the class will also focus on connections between MIT as an institution and technology in the history of the last 150 years. "

Aim is to analyze important current events for what they reveal about the nature and working of our technological world. Starting point is connection between technology and terrorism. Subject also explores how a human-built world can foster insecurity and danger, and how human beings respond. Many invited guests help develop a strong interdisciplinary approach (science, engineering, social science, humanities). Topics include technological risk and remediation, sociotechnical systems, imagination of disaster, technology and identity, technology and religion, technology and education, and technology and trust. Written and oral assignments and a final project required. Service-learning proposals and web-based presentations, in addition to written work, may be considered for the final project by the instructor.

In 1918 the Spanish influenza hit the United States and then the rest of the world with such swiftness that it sometimes went unnoticed until it had already passed. By mid-1919 it had killed more people than any other disease in a similar period in the history of the world. Kentucky coal miner Teamus Bartley was interviewed at ninety-five years of age and vividly recalled the impact of the flu pandemic on his community. With a dearth of healthy laborers, the mines shut down for six weeks in 1918 and miners went from digging coal to digging graves.

The introduction of new technologies has always altered the relationship between managers and workers, often by eliminating the need for skilled laborers. Helen Zalph and her colleagues in the printing division of the New York Daily News discovered this fact for themselves when computers revolutionized the way they put together the paper during the 1970s. What management gained in efficiency, workers lost in terms of their control over the production process, a sense of community and teamwork, and the sense of pride that comes with skilled craft work. They also lost many of their co-workers, who were no longer needed, and the power of their union. Now working largely in isolated cubby-offices, Zalph and many of her colleagues miss the older methods.

Details: This lesson can be added to the study of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly, specifically when the children are learning about monarch migration. It is suggested to use this lesson after Monarch Butterflies Lesson 1. Pursuits: Identity is questioning who you are, how others see you and who you want to become. Students will learn about each other and further define their own identities in relation to their culture, their families and their culture. Skills are writing, collaborating with others, and reading informational texts Criticality: Students are deepening their understanding of the intersections of a group's culture with the economic and land-use expectations of the economic powers of the world. In this case the people in the lesson chose to follow their traditions and culture  over these expectations and found an alternative path to support themselves economically.