Tag: engineering

  • Inspired by Ashley Vance’s Biography of Elon Musk

    Elon Musk (@elonmusk) is not only an inspiring and fascinating person, he’s also one of the most important entrepreneurs of our times who is combining technology with hard work and engineering smarts to solve some extremely challenging problems we face as a human race. Today I finished listening to the biography of Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance (@valleyhack)…

  • 30 Reasons I Love Teaching Elementary STEM

    This is my 20th year in education but my second year back in the classroom, teaching STEM full-time to 610 4th and 5th graders at Independence Elementary in Yukon, Oklahoma. Our STEM program is very unique, since it’s in the “specials “rotation for all students that also includes PE, Music and Art. This is the…

  • Great Videos To Show Students About NASA and Orion

    Today was a very exciting day at school for several reasons. One was the successful launch and recovery of the unmanned spacecraft “Orion” by NASA, which some of my STEM students watched and experienced in real-time. The launch was at 6:05 Oklahoma time (7:05 Florida time) and the splashdown in the Pacific Ocean happened 4.5 hours…

  • Sample Popsicle Catapult for STEM Class

    Half of my 4th and 5th grade STEM students (those not working in a center in our “Maker Studio”) are 2 days into a 4 day unit on creating popsicle catapults, which my district STEM mentor and peer teacher (Amy Loeffelholz – @AmyLoeffelholz) taught during our 2 day STEM Seeds PD Camp in June 2014. Students…