Design Squad Nation is yet another awesome website brought to us by PBS Kids. It includes tons of "how to" Engineering activities for kids, games, videos, and "challenges" that students can do and post their finished product on the site. This site is colorful, organized, and thorough. The games on the site range from basic fun activities to more complex "build your own" virtual gadgets. This site included instructional games, simulations, and tons of problem solving. If you are looking for drill-n-practice this is not the site to send your students to!
Try Engineering might be my favorite of the Engineering resources I found in my searching. This site has it all: a trivia game to test your Engineering knowledge, games where you design robotic limbs, and even a "game" where the student has to decide what is the best solution for the Alaskan pipeline. Beyond all of these things it is really well organized and many of the games/resources are links to other sites. I love that they are all high quality items on this site but they link you to additional websites where you could find other things on your own. The primary focus of many of the activities on this site is problem solving. There are design elements to many of them as well.
From a teacher point of view this website offers lesson plans that can be filtered either by alignment to standards or by Engineering career field. I like the idea that if I have a student who is mechanically inclined I could provide them with lessons that are focused on mechanical engineering.
American Society of Civil Engineer - ASCEville is a site aimed at educating kids about Civil Engineering. it has a ton of information about what Civil Engineering is and what a Civil Engineer does. It has links to games and many different digital story type information presentations. There really isn't an aspect of Civil Engineering that isn't presented on this site in some form. The games listed on the site are often links to games hosted on the PBS Kids website - which seems fine because the PBS folks typically put out some really quality stuff.
This site would fall under informational more than educational or instructional but it is definitely worth checking out for any teacher who wants to incorporate engineering tasks into their curriculum because the included lesson plans follow the 5E's quite nicely. There is a lot of potential problem solving and collaboration possibilities going on in the content of this site.
Science Kids is included on both my science sites and my engineering sited because it includes an entire section for Engineering. There are games, drill-n-practice, experiments, videos, pictures, facts, lessons, and projects. There is truly something to use for any educational purpose - whether it be working in a group on an experiment or taking a quiz to check terminology knowledge. The games on this site are not specifically sorted or grouped by grade. Some of them are aimed at a younger audience so older students would have to sort out which ones are appropriate for them.
eGFI isn't really an engineering website for students but rather an all encompassing collection of resources for teachers. I chose to add it to my list because it includes information for students about Engineering and the career possibilities that exist in the different Engineering branches. eGFI is an acronym created from the name of their magazine that is called Engineering: Go For It. They offer printed classroom materials (magazines) and a whole host of online resources that include lesson plans, activities, outreach programs, and connections to other teachers who are interested in Engineering.
Engineering Your Life
is included in my list not because it is educational but rather because
it is targeted at educating girls about engineering careers. I do have
a passion for letting our young women and girls know that they can and
SHOULD pursue careers in Science and Engineering so this site made me
incredibly happy. This site is aimed at High School girls but has a
sister site for Middle School girls - Engineer Girl.
NOTE: Reflection on website research is on my Mathematics Instructional Software page.
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