The EiE Professional Development Team works tirelessly to find innovative ways to make high-quality, affordable professional development accessible to educators all over the world. That’s why we’ve been so excited to roll out our new Online PD experiences. Over the past year, we’ve conducted webinars about habits of mind and engineering in out-of-school time, and we’ve had some amazing discussions with educators around the country about STEM integration and ELA connections. In March, we mentioned our brand new Online PD Scholarship on the blog, and we were blown away by the response! From the huge volume of applications, the Online PD team has pulled together an amazing team of dedicated educators to help us pilot test the very first online PD workshop series.

The EiE team works hard every day to produce curricula that will engage young learners and get them excited about engineering. We know that over 13 million children have engaged in EiE, and sometimes, we’re lucky enough to see their designs! We love when teachers find us on Twitter or Facebook, or email us to share their students’ creations with us. Today, we want to invite you to use our new hashtag for sharing student work—#EiEDesigns. And to celebrate, we’re spotlighting an EiE design that got the whole team excited: a very well-engineered plant package sent to us from an enterprising first-grade class!

The National Science Foundation (NSF)’s third annual “STEM for ALL Video Showcase” opens today, and you’re invited. This event is like the Sundance Film Festival for STEM education research: it includes more than 170 NSF-supported projects, all sharing short videos that showcase their work in STEM education. We submitted a production by our talented videography team. There’s a “people’s choice” award. So please visit, view, and vote!

We have exciting news to share: our founder and director, Christine Cunningham, has been awarded a Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Prize in Education—one of the most prestigious awards in the field! Christine is being recognized in the U.S. K-12 Education category for “pioneering a curriculum that is transforming education by introducing engineering concepts and practices at the elementary level.” Christine has worked tirelessly to bring engineering education into elementary classrooms for the past 14 years, and we’re thrilled that she’s receiving this well-deserved recognition.

Our team is always looking for more ways to support elementary science and elementary teachers. We listen closely to teachers, and we hear them express their need for financial support to underwrite the costs of professional development and materials. So we are pleased to invest some of our project funds in a new round of professional development scholarships . . . and today we’re delighted to announce the names of 49 elementary teachers from 21 states who will receive awards!