This article describes many strategies for meeting the needs of visual and kinesthetic students, including deaf students.
Five lesson plans, complete with videos, primary sources, and document-based questions (DBQ) to encourage students to utilize primary sources and incorporate thinking and writing into daily learning. Topics include: Artifact & Document Analysis, Compare & Contrast, Four Corners/Jigsaw, Graphic Organizers, and PERSIA (Political, Economical, Religious, Social, Intellectual, Artistic).
Detailed beginner's tutorial in creating online graphics. Requires access to a bitmap editor. Choose among topics, or work the entire 15 page tutorial in order.
In this activity, students will look at images of various types of technology (eg. TV, video games, subway) and determine which ones are “technological turning points.” To help evaluate whether or not something is a “technological turning point,” students will complete a worksheet that identifies each technology's economic, social, environmental, and political effects. Students will also think about the positive and negative impact of technological change, including who benefits and does not benefit.
What happens when you combine "technology" and "dissection?" At the McWane Science Center in Birmingham, AL, kids find out, by taking apart electronic gadgets to learn how they work. Kids can then put them back together or make new things with the parts. Check out what happens when they dissect cameras! [1:09]
This interactive timeline from the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Web site features influential technological innovations from 1750 to 1990.
A site where you can access information and tutorials about technologies and examples of how they can be used in education.
In this video adapted from Earth Island Institute's New Leaders Initiative, meet a high school student who worked to enact a state law to make cosmetics safer, after she learned they contained toxic chemicals linked to cancer.
Students measure different types of small-sized beams and calculate their respective moments of inertia. They compare the calculations to how much the beams bend when loads are placed on them, gaining insight into the ideal geometry and material for load-bearing beams.
Watch the ZOOM cast discover which insulator -- newspaper or aluminum foil -- is better at keeping an ice cube frozen longer.
In this video segment from Cyberchase, learn about the importance of creating a model as the CyberSquad designs a giant Trojan Ducky that will help them enter a fort without being noticed.
This lesson plan introduces students to Thomas Edison's life and inventions. It asks students to compare and contrast life around 1900 with their own lives and helps students understand the connections between the technological advancements of the early twentieth century and contemporary society and culture.
A simple book about hand tools. Includes audio narration in 11 additional languages with text in English.
This article describes a pilot project in which a fifth-grade classroom integrated six iPod Touch devices into all aspects of the curriculum.
Students go to an intersection to collect data on traffic light congestion. This is part of a 7-part engineering design lesson. [1:31]
Students celebrate by watching the traffic flow smoothly at their intersection and reflect on the role computers play in helping to solve complex problems. This is part of a 7-part engineering design lesson. [1:53]
Students learn about traffic lights and their importance in maintaining public safety and order. Using a Parallax® Basic Stamp 2 microcontroller, students work in teams on the engineering challenge to build a traffic light with a specific behavior. In the process, they learn about light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and how their use can save energy. Students also design their own requirements based on real-world observations as they learn about traffic safety and work towards an interesting goal within the realm of what is important in practice. Knowledge gained from the activity is directly transferrable to future activities, and skills learned are scalable to more ambitious class projects.
A book about trains, planes, and boats, and the difference between those that carry people and those that carry cargo. Includes audio narration in eight additional languages with text in English.
In this video segment adapted from NASA, learn how engineers are transforming the future of flight by designing airplanes based on principles found in nature. In the early 1900s, the Wright Brothers found inspiration for their first airplane in nature. Their "Flyer," which was modeled on a bird's flexible wing design, was steered and stabilized by pulleys and cables that twisted the wingtips. Despite its success, this control strategy quickly vanished from aviation. Instead, stiff wings capable of withstanding the greater forces associated with increased aircraft weights and flying speeds became the standard. In this video segment adapted from NASA, learn how designs found in nature have inspired today's aerospace engineers as they conceive the next-generation of flying machines. Grades 3-12.
Transistors are the building blocks of modern electronic devices. Your cell phones, iPods, and computers all depend on them to operate. Thanks to today's microfabrication technology, transistors can be made very tiny and be massively produced. You are probably using billions of them while working with this activity now--as of 2006, a dual-core Intel microprocessor contains 1.7 billion transistors. The field effect transistor is the most common type of transistor. So we will focus on it in this activity.