By Hui-Hui Wang This summer, we are very excited to have 16 teams of young people from across the state competing in our engineering design challenge , "Build a Rube Goldberg Machine." These third to eighth graders work together and learn the principles of physics to build a working machine that they can take to their county fairs. When planning this challenge, I really wanted to know, "What role can an out-of-school, project-based contest play in building and transferring STEM knowledge and skills? To address this, our science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) team has integrated a number of strategies. These teams of 3-10 youth in 10 counties have formed, adopted team names, and each has one or two adult volunteer leaders. Along with building the machine at face-to-face club meetings, the teams use online learning spaces -- team journals, a portfolio, and an "ask an expert" chat -- to support their learning. From these online records, we can al...
Our youth development educators bridge research and practice. In this blog, they offer their views on what's happening in the field of youth development, with an eye to evidence-based research written by themselves and others in our field. We welcome your comments.