Andrew Marcinek is an innovative K-12 leader, author, and national speaker. His work is focused on the intersection of instructional design and Technology.  This article, published in Medium in March 2024, discusses best practices for K-12 Technology Directors when leading an Artificial Intelligence implementation for their district.

In a column devoted to interactive resoures for the K-5 classroom, this article features Recycle City, an EPA-produced, student-friendly web site designed to teach students about actions that create a sustainable community. Students will learn about recycling, reducing waste, and using less energy. The column regularly appears in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, which focuses on the essential principles of climate literacy.

In this activity, students will read an article and create a visual representation of the differences between inventions and innovations. Then, they will choose between two emails to write: one to propose a solution to a global problem and the other to ask questions of a student inventor.

Students observe and discuss a vacuum cleaner model of a baghouse to better understand how this pollutant recovery method functions in cleaning industrial air pollution.

Working as a team, students discover that the value of pi (3.1415926...) is a constant and applies to all different sized circles. The team builds a basic robot and programs it to travel in a circular motion. A marker attached to the robot chassis draws a circle on the ground as the robot travels the programmed circular path. Students measure the circle's circumference and diameter and calculate pi by dividing the circumference by the diameter. They discover the pi and circumference relationship; the circumference of a circle divided by the diameter is the value of pi.

In this article, a school librarian looks at ways the elementary teacher can find support in the school library for introducing inquiry-based, technology-enriched science concepts to K-Grade 5 students. She describes the national "@ your library" campaign, which stresses collaboration between school librarians and teachers. The article appears in the free, online magazine Beyond Weather and the Water Cycle, which focuses on the seven essential principles of climate science.

     Este trabalho foi feito para analisar o estado do laboratório 206 do IMETRO, com o objetivo de saber o por que nós estudantes de ciências da Computação não temos tido aulas nele, e assim aprensentar possiveis soluções para o funciomento do Laboratório.

This activity is an introduction to the concept of levers, the classes, and their parts using the musculoskeletal system.

In this video segment adapted from NOVA, a team of archaeologists and engineers explores different uses of the lever by recreating the engineering feats of the ancient Easter Island peoples.

In this activity on page 1 of the PDF, learners compare the relative sizes of biological objects (like DNA and bacteria) that can't be seen by the naked eye. Learners will be surprised to discover the range of sizes in the microscopic world. This activity can be followed up with a second activity, "What's in a microbe?", located on page 3 in the same resource.

In this lesson, students learn about the physical properties of the Moon. They compare these to the properties of the Earth to determine how life would be different for astronauts living on the Moon. Using their understanding of these differences, they are asked to think about what types of products engineers would need to design for us to live comfortably on the Moon.

How can you lift a heavy metal table using air? In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, cast members succeed in lifting a table using their own breath and a few plastic bags.

Did you know that when you look at a star, your eyes are capturing light that traveled all the way from the star to your eye? Learn more about how light carries information from distant objects. This Moveable Museum article, available as a nine-page printable PDF file, offers a kid-friendly look at how information about distant objects comes to us in the form of light. It includes suggested resources for further research.

Students learn about the weighted mean by building spreadsheets that apply this concept to the average density of the oceanic lithosphere.

During this problem-based blended learning module students will be designing their dream bedroom as well as creating a scale drawing of the items they chose to be in their bedroom.  The launch activity introduces the students to Scale City, which is a video that explores scale models in the real world. Students are then given dimensions for a fictional bedroom to furnish with items of their choosing. Price is not considered in this module, but a budget could be introduced as an extension of the module.  Students will then spend time researching items that they would want to place in their bedroom with the area constraints given. Students will have the opportunity to provide each other peer feedback on their bedroom designs.  Once students have a rough idea of their bedroom design, they will spend some time creating a scale drawing of their bedroom on graph paper. This will give students the opportunity to use a scale factor to create a scale drawing. Students will again be provided feedback on their designs and be given time to reflect and redesign as needed.  If students need extra time to practice using a scale factor and creating scale models, a station rotation lesson has been included as an optional resource.

Can you avoid the boulder field and land safely, just before your fuel runs out, as Neil Armstrong did in 1969? Our version of this classic video game accurately simulates the real motion of the lunar lander with the correct mass, thrust, fuel consumption rate, and lunar gravity. The real lunar lander is very hard to control.

This is an activity about spacecraft design. Teams of learners will model how scientists and engineers design and build spacecraft to collect, store, and transmit data to earth. Teams will design a system to store and transmit topographic data of the Moon and then analyze that data and compare it to data collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter .

This is a lithograph about NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, or MMS. Learners will cut out and assemble a colorful 3D model of an MMS spacecraft. Web links, additional facts, and QR codes are included for audiences to access more information.

In this activity, learners explore the "nuts and bolts" of gene chips. Learners construct a simple model of a DNA microarray (also known as gene chips) and learn how microarrays can be used to identify and treat disease--including cancer. This resource includes references and an explanation of microarrays.

This course explores the origins of magic, science, and religion as forms of belief within and across cultures. It addresses the place of rationality and belief in competing sociocultural theories, with a focus on analyzing modern perspectives. It also examines how cases of overlap between magic, science, and religion raise new questions about modernity and human nature.