Students will enter this lesson knowing that materials get warm in the sun. In this fun follow-up activity, your students will get creative with craft materials. They will figure out how to protect an "animal" and its territory from getting too hot in the sun. What will they build to keep their animals cool?

This course provides students with an opportunity to conceive, design and implement a product, using rapid prototyping methods and computer-aid tools. The first of two phases challenges each student team to meet a set of design requirements and constraints for a structural component. A course of iteration, fabrication, and validation completes this manual design cycle. During the second phase, each team conducts design optimization using structural analysis software, with their phase one prototype as a baseline.

Provides a hands-on introduction to the resources for designing and fabricating smart systems, including CAD/CAM/CAE; NC machining, 3-D printing, injection molding, laser cutting; PCB layout and fabrication; sensors and actuators; analog instrumentation; embedded digital processing; wired and wireless communications. Emphasis on learning how to use the tools as well as understand how they work.

This resource contains a series of activities, lessons and ideas for introducing Elementary students to the design thinking process. The author includes connections to Empathy and the implications of designing things with others in mind.

This inquiry is designed for supporting students' independent exploration of water outdoors as well as the use of computer interactives. 

Hands-on, project based learning for Grades 4 to 8. Students use design thinking processes to solve engineering challenges. These space engineering themed lessons will engage students as they apply creative problem-solving skills. Resource includes a full downloadable guidebook. The guidebook includes a description of the design process, 5 design challenges, student handouts, and rubrics. It also includes links to other valuable resources and connection to standards (i.e. Next Generation Science, National Standards).

From Site:
NASA and DESIGN SQUAD developed this online workshop for educators and afterschool leaders who want to build their skills and confidence in guiding kids through engineering activities.

Whether you're experienced or new at this, you'll come away with insights and strategies for strengthening your kids' critical-thinking abilities and getting them excited about using the design process, the series of steps engineers use to arrive at solutions.

In this self-guided workshop, you'll:

Experience the design process in action. Learn and reflect on ways you can use the design process to tap into your kids' problem-solving skills and creativity.

Watch an engineering activity. See how easy it is to integrate the design process into the hands-on activities you do with your kids.

Get resources. Discover a variety of engineering activities from NASA and DESIGN SQUAD for kids in grades K–12.

In the past building prototypes of electronic components for new projects/products was limited to using protoboards and wirewrap. Manufacturing a printed-circuit-board was limited to final production, where mistakes in the implementation meant physically cutting traces on the board and adding wire jumpers - the final products would have these fixes on them! Today that is no longer the case, while you will still cut traces and use jumpers when debugging a board, manufacturing a new final version without the errors is a simple and relatively inexpensive task. For that matter, manufacturing a prototype printed circuit board which you know is likely to have errors but which will get the design substantially closer to the final product than a protoboard setup is not only possible, but desirable. In this class, you'll learn to design, build, and debug printed-circuit-boards.

Few classroom topics generate as much excitement as rockets. The scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical foundations of rocketry provide exciting classroom opportunities for authentic hands-on, minds-on experimentation. The activities and lesson plans contained in this educator guide emphasize hands-on science, prediction, data collection and interpretation, teamwork, and problem solving. The guide also contains background information about the history of rockets and basic rocket science. The rocket activities in this guide support national curriculum standards for science, mathematics and technology.