Build your knowledge.

One of EiE’s crowning achievements is our Professional Development (PD) program. Elementary educators who come into our workshops knowing almost nothing about engineering leave feeling like EiE experts. But as much as our PD staff would love to show every single teacher the best practices to implement EiE, they can’t be everywhere at once. So when a district or school needs to prepare many teachers to implement EiE and provide the long-term support they know their teachers need, they send their professional development providers to one of our Teacher Educator Institutes. At these workshops, PD Providers and teacher leaders learn more about EiE, improve their teaching practice, and have a total blast working with the EiE team! We will be hosting a 3-day Teacher Educator Institute at the Museum of Science, Boston on October 18th–20th, 2017. If you've been thinking about attending a TEI, read on to learn more about these one-of-a-kind workshops!

The June 2015 online issue of Educational Leadership explores the theme “ Improving Schools from Within.” The magazine invited educators to share stories of schools that changed for the better—and how they did it. 

Emily Hardee, a North Carolina STEM coordinator, tells the story of a Raleigh elementary school that transformed itself from one of the lowest performing schools in the district into a STEM school that’s a model for the state. We’re gratified to know that the Engineering is Elementary curriculum played a part in the change.

The Engineering is Elementary team is committed to making our engineering curricula accessible to all students, including English Learners—the fastest growing group of public school students in the United States. We already have Spanish-translated student-facing materials available for our 20 in-school curriculum units, and you'll notice an exciting addition if you check out our two out-of-school time curricula. You can now download Spanish translations of the student notebooks for all 20 Engineering Adventures and Engineering Everywhere units!

Any teacher will tell you that getting students to work together effectively in teams is not easy. Simply telling students to work together won’t lead to productive collaboration. The term “collaboration” has many definitions, but most writers agree it’s more than just working in a group. Collaboration is the act of engaging in creative group work that sparks innovation and productivity. To accomplish this, teachers need to model productive collaboration and give students authentic opportunities to collaborate. Of course, this is always easier said than done. Because EiE values collaboration and views collaboration as an essential part of engineering (and of life), we developed curricula that models for teachers easy and effective ways to encourage productive collaboration.

Summer is a great time to take your mind off of work and relax with your friends at a backyard BBQ. But for the EiE team, there’s no such thing as a day off from engineering. Whether we’re at weddings, graduations, birthday parties, or baby showers, we’re constantly imagining ways we can use the Engineering Design Process to improve the festivities. And we don’t mean to brag, but we’re pretty sure we’ve perfected the summer cookout. So this summer, give our super practical BBQ technology tips a try. We guarantee that everyone will be talking about your gathering for years to come.