Robotics in STEAM (WeDo 2.0)

Target Audience: K-3
This session covers the basics of using the WeDo 2.0 set, provides hands-on opportunities for using it, and explores the many ways it can be included in your classroom.

MINDSTORMs Programming Environments

Target Audience: Grades 5-12
This workshop will explore new programming environments that can be used with the LEGO EV3 (for example Scratch and Swift playground), opening new doors for for unique coding experiences in the classroom.

LEGO and the Maker Movement

Target Audience: Grades K-8
In this hands-on workshop, participants will explore the learning opportunities that are possible through making and the leveraging of makerspaces, and particularly, what role LEGO can play in a maker activity. The workshop will also highlight LEGO Education’s recently launched Maker Activities.

LEGO and Literacy

Target Audience: Grades K-8
Novel Engineering (NE), a NSF-funded project at Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach, engages students in grades 1-8 in engineering by using books as the context for client-centered, open-ended design challenges. Novel Engineering research has shown that teachers and students find their classroom texts provide a rich ground for engaging in engineering design, in addition to supporting and deepening literacy engagement and comprehension. NE can be used with fiction and non-fiction, which allows students to identify character-clients and problems, scope constraints surrounding problems, and design and build solutions. In this hands-on, interactive workshop, participants will get an introduction to Novel Engineering and then work in groups to work through a Novel Engineering project based on an excerpt from a book using LEGO. Not recommended if already participating in the Novel Engineering workshop on June 6th.

Advanced Play with LEGO EV3

Target Audience: Grades 6-12
This hands-on session allows participants to push the boundaries of how the LEGO EV3 can be used in the classroom. Led by the EDGErs (teachers who support the LEGO Engineering Community), explorations will include more advanced ways of interacting with the LEGO tools and using the products for teaching more advanced topics. Recommended to have some previous EV3 experience, but not required.

Integrating LEGO and STEM for Middle Schoolers

Target Audience: Grades 4-8
This hands-on workshop will explore activities that leverage LEGO in unique ways to teach core concepts in math and the sciences.

Client-Centered Design with LEGO

Target Audience: K-12
Engineers don’t just design for themselves- often, it is a problem that they are trying to solve for a person or group that can be vastly different from themselves. This hands-on workshop will place an emphasis around designing for a client and the value of empathy in the design process.

LEGO 6 Bricks

Target Grades: K-5
This introductory LEGO workshop  will demonstrate the power that just a handful of LEGO can have in eliciting student creativity. This hands-on workshop will demonstrate simple and straightforward activities that can have a big impact in the classroom with discussions centered around the diversity of solutions and creativity aspects of making.

Learning Through Play in STEM

Target Audience: K-5
This session provides a brief introduction to many of LEGO Education products and explores ways in which they can be leveraged to teach STEM topics. Participants will be provided a hands-on opportunity to experience the tools and discuss methods for incorporating them into their classrooms, specifically using LEGO Education Simple and Powered Machines Kits.

Discover STEM with MINDSTORMs

Target Audience: Grades 3-12
Discovering LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 is much simpler than you might think. If you haven’t started exploring yet, we’re here to help.

LEGO in Afterschool Settings and Competition Opportunities

Target Audience: Grades 8-12
Discover from local educators how they have used LEGO competitions and challenges to build excitement around robotics and engineering at their schools.

Learning to Program in Early Childhood using ScratchJr

Target Audience: PreK-2
ScratchJr is a free programming app for children ages 5-7 designed to teach basic coding concepts and computational thinking skills. Using graphical programming blocks, children can create their own imaginative stories and games. In this session, participants will get a hands-on lesson on how to use ScratchJr and how to teach coding in a playful, developmentally appropriate way.
The ScratchJr programming app was created as a collaboration between the DevTech Research Group at Tufts University and MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group.

Fostering a culture of authentic collaboration through student driven documentation within the classroom

Target Audience: 6-12
Join us for a session that provides a deep dive into exploring how to develop a culture of authentic collaboration within the classroom. Come away with new skills and tools for immediate use in your classroom! Topics to include: how to utilize design journals for documentation, foster discussions using cloud based active learning platforms, and a case scenario.

Students Doing Science: Case Studies of Disciplinary Engagement

Target Audience: K-12
The goal of this workshop is to present a set of video cases of students’ scientific engagement in classrooms. These examples will serve as a basis for discussion on what it means to “do science” in classrooms and how students’ scientific engagement gets started and sustained. In this symposium, we present 4 exemplary cases of students’ scientific engagement to start a conversation around these two issues.

Novel Engineering

Target Audience: K-8
Novel Engineering (NE), a NSF-funded project at Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach, engages students in grades 1-8 in engineering by using books as the context for client-centered, open-ended design challenges. Novel Engineering research has shown that teachers and students find their classroom texts provide a rich ground for engaging in engineering design, in addition to supporting and deepening literacy engagement and comprehension. NE can be used with fiction and non-fiction, which allows students to identify character-clients and problems, scope constraints surrounding problems, and design and build solutions. In this hands-on, interactive workshop, participants will get an introduction to Novel Engineering and then work in groups to work through a Novel Engineering project based on an excerpt from a book.  Not recommended if already participating in the “LEGO and Literacy” workshop on June 5th.

Community-Based Engineering

Target Audience: Grades 1-6
Learn about how to design community-based engineering activities for your classroom. We’ll go over past project curriculums, talk about how to integrate science inquiry, and finish with brainstorming ideas for your own classroom and school. Using examples from our research project, we’ll share methods of how to choose problems and how to have conversations with students if they are choosing problems. We’ll also share the collection of materials, our portable maker studio, that we assembled to complete these types of projects.

Engineering and Art

Details to come

KIBO Robotics

Target Audience: PreK-2
The KIBO robot is a technology designed by the DevTech Research Group at Tufts University which promotes the acquisition of programming skills in children 4-7 years of age. KIBO is an award-winning and internationally recognized educational platform which provides a completely off-screen coding experience. Join us for a hands-on KIBO robotics workshop that is both playful and informative for teaching young children how to program using a tangible coding language. Attendees will be able to program their own KIBO robot and will learn about how robotics can be integrated into many different subjects, especially art, music, culture, and dance!

Sound Science – Designing Rubber Band Musical Instruments

Target Audience: Grades 2- 12
In this workshop, you will start by experimenting with how to control the pitch of a musical string by changing the length, thickness, and tension of the rubber bands.  We’ll then explore how music is amplified by making our own speakers from scratch and adding contact microphones to your rubber band instruments.  The workshop will end with everybody performing the most beautiful piece of music that the world has ever heard on their rubber band instrument (or something like that).

Makerspaces and Maker Education in Early Childhood

Target Audience:  PreK-2
In this workshop, participants will explore makerspace education for early childhood, and learn about key elements for designing makerspaces for this age range. Then, they’ll engage in hands-on play with a variety of developmentally-appropriate maker tools and technologies. Participants will leave with resources for developing their own maker-themed educational activities.

Supporting Iteration and Decision-Making in Design Tasks

Target Audience: K-6
Participants will work on and engage with a variety of design tasks and debrief how different kinds of tasks support different kinds of engineering learning. We will emphasize in particular the opportunities tasks present for frequent iteration and design failure. We will share strategies for helping elementary students engage in collaborative sense-making and decision-making based on their design iterations.

Supporting Iteration and Decision-Making in Design Tasks

Target Audience: K-6

Participants will work on and engage with a variety of design tasks and debrief how different kinds of tasks support different kinds of engineering learning. We will emphasize in particular the opportunities tasks present for frequent iteration and design failure. We will share strategies for helping elementary students engage in collaborative sense-making and decision-making based on their design iterations.

Designing Biomimetic Robots

Target Audience: Grades 5-8
In this workshop, we will use the power of biomimetics, or biologically-inspired design, to integrate life science learning into an engineering design process. Participants will explore the relationships between biological structures and functions for several organisms. After drawing design principles from this biology research, participants will have the opportunity to build a biomimetic robot for use in a search and rescue scenario. We will use Hummingbird robotics kits. Workshop facilitators will also share about a new biomimetic robotics middle school project that Tufts has launched with TERC and schools in Maryland and New England.

Designing a Makerspace for Middle and High School

Target Audience: Grades 6-12
This workshop is for educators and administrators who are in the early stages of designing a makerspace, or who considering whether a makerspace is right for their school’s community. This workshop will involve discussions around the potential roles makerspaces in formal education, and the hurdles and opportunities in gaining community buy-in around the space. Various materials and tools as well as project ideas will be discussed.