How much do you know about engineering? Could you spot common misconceptions and identify unlikely engineers? 

One of the most pervasive misconceptions is that engineering is too complicated for young children to find engaging. But did you know that 65% of surveyed scientists and graduate students reported that their interest in STEM began before middle school? It’s time to break stereotypes. Challenge those misconceptions. 

 Take our “Engineering IQ” quiz and find out your engineering IQ! Good luck. Have fun and share our quiz with your peers!

EiE and the Museum of Science, Boston have submitted two panels for consideration for next March’s SXSW EDU conference, the education component of the famous SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. And, we need your help to get to there! SXSW EDU organizers have a unique way of selecting panels. They collect thousands of potential entries like ours, and then call on the education community to vote on those they would like to see actually take place through a process called PanelPicker.

This year, the students at Tabernacle Elementary School in Tabernacle, New Jersey are experiencing something brand new—they’re solving problems and exploring new challenges in a hands-on, collaborative STEAM environment called the Collaboratory. Since the Collaboratory has opened, students have thrived with project-based learning and the Tabernacle community has come together to support the common goal of helping kids develop 21st century skills. Collaboratory teacher Brittany Murro says, “When we started this, we thought, it’s the first year, we’ll just take things a day at a time and see where they go. But it has gone above and beyond what I think any of us expected for the first year of a new program like this.”

The engineering design process is central to engineering. Engineers use the engineering design process to create technologies. For our elementary engineering curriculum, we developed an age-appropriate five-step engineering design process: Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, and Improve. Did you know you can apply this problem-solving tool to problems outside of engineering? Throughout the school day, your students encounter numerous problems that they’ll need to solve. Our engineering design process can give your students a process to solve their everyday problems more effectively and a chance to practice important 21st century skills like collaboration, communication and critical thinking. Over the years, educators have shared with us the innovative ways they adapted EiE’s five-step Engineering Design Process (EDP) to the help their students solve a problem. Below we share our favorite examples!

How much do you know about engineering? Think you can spot common misconceptions about the field of engineering? 

In every EiE unit, we challenge students to solve a real-world problem with the Engineering Design Process. But around our favorite holidays, we can’t help but brainstorm fantastical design challenge contexts that fit the season. This past spring, we suggested out-of-this-world EiE modifications for Star Wars Day. This month, we’re bringing you some Halloween-themed modifications for spooky engineering fun in your classroom!