Explore the science of waves and discover how to bring them to life in the classroom. We’ve got a great wave table to demonstrate wave action and help explain why and how erosion happens. Bring this to the classroom with a smaller version you and your students can build with easy to source materials. One of the highlights of this class is the boat building competition! Can you build a boat that can withstand a tsunami or carry the heaviest payload?

This workshop allows you to explore earthquakes in a hands on way. Use our state of the art shake table to explore how energy is transferred in an earthquake on waves. Learn how you can bring the magic of amplitude and wavelength to your students in a visual and fun way by making your own low tech shake table to bring back to your classroom. (Students who have taken the exploring circuits workshop may have the opportunity to build a battery powered shaketable!) Then it’s on to learning about construction techniques. Can you build an earthquake proof skyscraper?

Learn the role each one plays in making an object fly. Then try your hand at our giant wind tunnel to apply what you’ve learned by making a flying machine of your own. We will go over some books you can use with children for inspiration. Want to share the fun with your students but don’t have a mega sized wind tunnel at school? Make a simple version of the wind tunnel (that fits in your car) to bring back to your classroom.

Learn how to inspire students to unleash their imaginations and challenge them to keep trying when a design doesn’t work. The EDP is a series of steps that engineers use to guide them as they solve complex, real-world problems. The process reflects the way engineers approach problem-solving—brainstorming for ideas, trying them out, learning from their mistakes, and then trying new ideas based on what they learned. Integrating this process into the classroom may seem daunting but it’s not! In this workshop you’ll learn how to introduce EDP to your students. We will walk through lots of projects that will provide opportunities for flexible, higher-order thinking and problem-solving that integrates skills your students have learned as part of their core instruction. Come explore the possibilities! You’ll leave with idea galore and a kit that includes a deck of project ideas and some basic supplies.

In this intro to engineering class we will be exploring the steps of the engineering design process, focusing on the prototyping stage. Before you let your students lose with more expensive materials to create with - learn how you can teach them to use paper and glue to make models of their ideas. This often skipped step is an important one for letting students learn by doing without wasting precious material and students of all ages can work with paper and glue. Leave with some tips about how to run a paper prototyping session as well as a board you make yourself on paper and cardboard attachments that you can hang in your classroom for inspiration.

In this intro to engineering class we will be exploring the steps of the engineering design process, focusing on the prototyping stage. Before you let your students lose with more expensive materials to create with - learn how you can teach them to use paper and glue to make models of their ideas. This often skipped step is an important one for letting students learn by doing without wasting precious material and students of all ages can work with paper and glue. Leave with some tips about how to run a paper prototyping session as well as a board you make yourself on paper and cardboard attachments that you can hang in your classroom for inspiration.

We will be starting from scratch - learn how a battery works and how electricity powers everything around. By breaking down circuits into their simplest terms and using tools like snap circuits and little bits, anyone can understand how it all works. Learn about components, types of circuits and how to read basic schematics. Build your own circuit board to take back to your classroom and get ideas for how students can make things that connect to it.

Paper circuits are a great introduction to circuits. So what IS a paper circuit? A paper circuit is a low-voltage electric circuit that is created on paper or cardboard using conductive copper tape, LEDs and a power supply such as a coin-cell battery. We will take you through the process step by step. You’ll learn how to use paper circuits to integrate art, STEM, social studies, and language arts. We’ll start with simple projects and with a simple circuit and progress onto more complicated circuits. We’ll supply you with copper tape and LEDs so your students can light up projects in your own classroom

We will start at the ground level and explore basic coding concepts and how to successfully string together lines of code to create simple programs. Block coding makes it easy to learn but is powerful enough to challenge every learner. We will be working with programs such as Makeblock, Scratch and code.org to create our programs and learn to incorporate loops, conditional statements and functions. This is the backbone for programming all robotics and designing games and other interactive educational tools. Try your code out in real life with a makey makey that you will get to take home with you to use in your classroom.

Even if you have no prior experience with coding and robots, you CAN implement coding into your classroom.We will show you how! In this workshop, you’ll experience the wonder of programming a robot to complete a specific task. We start with the basics of coding through fun offline coding activities before moving on to hands-on work with grade-appropriate robots.

Even if you have no prior experience with coding and robots, you CAN implement coding into your classroom.We will show you how! In this workshop, you’ll experience the wonder of programming a robot to complete a specific task. We start with the basics of coding through fun offline coding activities before moving on to hands-on work with grade-appropriate robots.

VInyl cutters are great entry level machines. We’ll show you how they are much more than just a “sticker machine” . We will cover the basics of vinyl curing machines such as the Cricut or the Cameo. You will get hands-on experience with digital fabrication and learn how to incorporate these tools into authentic learning experiences in the classroom.