Icon for: Christine Cunningham

CHRISTINE CUNNINGHAM

Engineering is Elementary, Museum of Science, Boston
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  • Icon for: Julie Steimle

    Julie Steimle

    Program Director, CEEMS
    May 16, 2016 | 11:29 a.m.

    I love the student testimonials. Your video alluded to the fact that students who sometimes exhibit behavior problems in the classroom are engaged in the engineering projects. We have found the same to be true in our project. Just curious, is there a way you have found to quantify student engagement and reduction in off task behavior?

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 16, 2016 | 04:12 p.m.

    I’m glad you liked the video! Engineering is Elementary has not yet undertaken a quantitative analysis of student engagement. However, we do frequently hear from teachers that all of their students are highly engaged with EiE. Please don’t hesitate to email eie@mos.org if you would like to hear more about our research projects. You can also learn more about EiE research at this link to our website: http://eie.org/engineering-elementary/eie-research.

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 16, 2016 | 04:15 p.m.

    Engineering is Elementary® (EiE) is an ongoing project of the National Center for Technological Literacy® at the Museum of Science, Boston. EiE serves children and educators in grades K–8 with research-based, teacher-tested curriculum materials for schools and out-of-school time programs. If you have questions or comments about the project or about our video, I would be happy to answer them.

  • Icon for: Susan Kowalski

    Susan Kowalski

    Senior Research Scientist
    May 16, 2016 | 06:35 p.m.

    Your video really moved me. “I didn’t know that Charley was a genius.” Wow! I’m very interested to learn the results of your efficacy trial.

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 17, 2016 | 04:35 p.m.

    Happy to hear about your positive response to our video! You can read more about Exploring the Efficacy of Engineering is Elementary (E4) at this link to our website: http://www.eie.org/e4. The E4 study is still ongoing and any new updates will be posted there as they are released. You should also keep an eye on our social media channels and newsletter for any new announcements.

  • Icon for: Richard Hudson

    Richard Hudson

    Facilitator
    Senior Executive Producer
    May 17, 2016 | 09:28 a.m.

    The video makes a powerful statement about the way EiE encourages collaborate learning. The featured educator seems to be getting a lot out of the curriculum. What techniques do you use to teach other educators to use the program this well?

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 17, 2016 | 04:37 p.m.

    Engineering is Elementary has an amazing professional development team that provides workshops for teachers, teacher educators, and out-of-school time professionals. Our workshops are learner-driven, hands-on, and are designed to build educators’ confidence in teaching engineering. We also have an extensive suite of online resources available to provide continuing support to educators. You can read more about our PD offerings on our website: http://www.eie.org/engineering-elementary/works....

  • Lauren Solarski

    Guest
    May 17, 2016 | 03:34 p.m.

    Hi Christine and Vanessa (small world!) I just wanted to post an appreciation for this beautiful video and the hard work you do to make engineering accessible to ALL students. Very inspiring!

  • Icon for: Robert Tinker

    Robert Tinker

    Facilitator
    May 17, 2016 | 04:07 p.m.

    Nice video. Kids are sooo positive. Just curious, how do you assess student learning and skill development?

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 19, 2016 | 08:00 p.m.

    Hi Robert. We have used a variety of instruments in our work. We’ve developed a series of “quantitative” (bubble-scan) instruments that we use to assess students learning about general engineering, fields of engineering, and science concepts. We are also experimenting with a written performance assessment. On the more qualitative side, we have student engineering notebooks that we have scored. And we have video that we code for various engineering practices.

  • Icon for: Jerry Valadez

    Jerry Valadez

    Facilitator
    CEO
    May 17, 2016 | 04:42 p.m.

    Good job on the video. Did good job of showing affective impact of hands-on engineering curriculum when kids are left to work and collaborate together on solutions and/or engineering problems. What I didn’t get from the video is how you do this. Showing part of the curriculum or how teachers are guided to enhance the engagement part of the lesson you developed would be good. Also something about the content and how you would assess student understanding. This could be an example of how you promote science/engineering discourse by students through your program. I am a little familiar with EIE and know you do this, somewhat. I also work with teachers in the classroom and in the ‘out of school time’ venue with engineering curriculum and get similar results with engagement. We are also working on ways of measuring this and hope to make it quantifiable. We also find our emphasis with science/engineering talk important for English Language Development but also use specific strategies along with the curriculum. What have you embedded into EIE that specifically supports ELL students acquisition of English. What are the supports provided for teachers to learn how to deliver the curriculum?

    Thank you.

  • Icon for: Julie Steimle

    Julie Steimle

    Program Director, CEEMS
    May 17, 2016 | 04:48 p.m.

    I would be interested in learning how you document student engagement in a quantifiable manner.

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 18, 2016 | 04:40 p.m.

    Thanks for the positive and thorough feedback Jerry! More examples of students collaborating and teachers using our curriculum can be found in our classroom video set (http://www.eie.org/eie-classroom-video). At that link you will find video of all 20 Engineering is Elementary units being taught in real classrooms.

    The teacher guide for each unit includes a variety of helpful teacher tips, some of which are marked specifically for English Language Learners.

    EiE provides professional development workshops and has an extensive library of teacher resources available online to support teachers. If you have any more questions or would like any additional information about anything I mentioned, please feel free to email eie@mos.org.

  • Icon for: Akira Kamiya

    Akira Kamiya

    Teacher Learning Center Director
    May 18, 2016 | 01:17 p.m.

    Interesting video. Seems like a great opportunity for all those kids!

    I am curious about the content of the actual projects though!
    Those were solar ovens? What did they put in them?
    Did they run into trouble? How did they resolve them if they did?

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 18, 2016 | 04:04 p.m.

    Yes, they are solar ovens! The students in this video made s’mores in their ovens. You can learn more about our “Designing Solar Ovens” unit and watch more video from real classrooms on our website: http://www.eie.org/eie-curriculum/curriculum-un....

    An important part of our Engineering Design Process is the “Improve” step, which is when students work on modifying their design to make it better and resolving any issues that arise. You can read more about the EDP and watch a short video about it at this link: http://www.eie.org/overview/engineering-design-....

  • Icon for: araina boyd

    araina boyd

    Student
    May 18, 2016 | 01:21 p.m.

    This is fantastic. I love the testimonies of the students. Utilizing the design process to guide their learning is a great step towards developing metacognition! “All these steps we did, helped me like think… maybe I could become an engineer.” Awesome. Do you provide opportunities for the student’s to visit with practicing engineers that represent diversity in the field?

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 18, 2016 | 04:23 p.m.

    Hi Araina! Glad you liked our video. No, Engineering is Elementary does not directly provide opportunities for students to visit with practicing engineers. If you have any more questions about the project please don’t hesitate to email us at eie@mos.org.

  • Icon for: Ron Ulseth

    Ron Ulseth

    May 18, 2016 | 08:07 p.m.

    Excellent video. I really like how the students’ voices created the message. Your use of an engineering design process at such an early age is the real genius in this program.

    What do you use as your source for project ideas?

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 19, 2016 | 04:45 p.m.

    Thanks for the kind words about EiE! Our curriculum developers begin with an interesting field of engineering and then brainstorm ways to represent some common tasks associated with that field. They experiment and develop lessons from their brainstorming sessions and then pilot test those lessons in real classrooms to further refine their activities. If you have any more questions about curriculum development feel free to email eie@mos.org.

  • Icon for: Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Eli Tucker-Raymond

    Research Scientist
    May 18, 2016 | 10:07 p.m.

    Thank you for putting young people front and center in the classroom and in the video. Could you please share what one of your biggest challenges might be once your curriculum is in the classrooms and how you deal with it?

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 19, 2016 | 08:04 p.m.

    One of our challenges is how to provide ongoing support to classroom teachers who might be new to teaching engineering. We are trying to address this by developed a set of Professional Development Resources, including our Video Library and an array of online PD sessions that will allow teachers to continue to share their experiences and probe pedagogical strategies in more depth.

  • Icon for: Dawn O'Connor

    Dawn O'Connor

    Director/ Co-I
    May 19, 2016 | 12:27 p.m.

    Thank you for sharing this video. The children’s self efficacy and attitude about engineering as something that was within their realm of choices was very evident. The design cycle and the cognitive demands on the students was structured in a way to support all students engage. How have you supported students with the “failure” of design and building their capacity to see failure as part of the design process?

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 19, 2016 | 08:06 p.m.

    Hi Dawn, Our five-step engineering design process: ASK-IMAGINE-PLAN-CREATE-IMPROVE signals to children that we expect that they will need to improve their design. We encourage teachers to help children realize that engineers learn from failure—it is a necessary part of the engineering process.

  • Icon for: Michael Middleton

    Michael Middleton

    Dean and Professor
    May 19, 2016 | 04:02 p.m.

    Thanks for sharing your terrific project! The video captures the students’ experience very nicely. Three things stand out for me: the importance of building student identify as science thinkers/learners, the way students engage each other and appreciate each other’s contributions, and the sense of efficacy the students feel as a result of participation. How wonderful! I’m curious how these outcomes transfer into other classrooms or into future science learning.

  • Cheryl Bowman

    Guest
    May 19, 2016 | 08:12 p.m.

    I was extremely excited about what I saw in your video. I loved how the students were engaged in the process. I went to the EiE website to see what else I could find out about your program. I downloaded a sample lesson on plants and noticed the literacy connection. I’m wondering if all of your EiE programs incorporate literacy. I teach kindergarten and literacy is the source of all of my curriculum.

  • Icon for: Christine Cunningham

    Christine Cunningham

    Lead Presenter
    Founder & Director, Engineering is Elementary
    May 20, 2016 | 04:47 p.m.

    Yes! All 20 Engineering is Elementary units begin with a storybook to help set the context for the engineering problem students will later work on. For our out-of-school time Engineering Adventures units there are lists of additional resources available on our website (http://eie.org/engineering-adventures/curriculu...) that include supplemental readings.

  • Cheryl Bowman

    Guest
    May 20, 2016 | 08:33 p.m.

    Thanks for the link. I’m thinking about this program as after school enrichement for students in my k-2 school. There’s been some talk of exploring opportunities for our at risk students beyond the day. I am teaching a STEM program this for the students needing that extra support throughout the summer and am exploring programs that may work.

  • Dr. Bennett

    Guest
    May 23, 2016 | 09:47 a.m.

    Excellent all the way through. I think this is the way of the future for our country and STEM. The video shows the honesty and passion the kids have on the hands on method. As an Engineer who has been in the class room elementary and beyond, you can’t stop but to love the kids! Great work Ms. Cunningham we need to duplicate you and your efforts across America! My website: math-infusion.com

  • Icon for: Ann Austin

    Ann Austin

    Professor of Higher Education
    May 23, 2016 | 06:38 p.m.

    I found this video and the project to be very exciting. I especially liked seeing how the engineering project provided opportunities for the children to find specific ways to appreciate each other as well as to learn about themselves. I hope you have a variety of research and evaluation efforts that are connected with the project in order to look at immediate as well as long-term impacts—both expected and unexpected.

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