Inspire the Next World Changers

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The world needs youth from around the world to be passionate about solving global issues. In order for our young innovators to undergo the journey to solving global issues they must be equipped with the right mindset and skills. Below find the resources and slides to my recent keynote, How to Inspire a Generation of World Changers.

Resources

  • Changing the world isn't easy! How do we equip students for the journey?
    • Champion student ideas
    • Involve students in the process of innovation
    • Give them opportunities to solve problems they care about
    • Spend time investigating problems
    • Get them brainstorming with design challenges
    • Teach resilience
    • Connect them with role models, guest experts and mentors
    • Include student voice and choice
    • Facilitate the documentation of ideas and innovations (digital portfolios, research logs and journaling)
    • Participate in global collaboration projects like the Global Goals!
  • Where to find activities, projects and lessons: 
    • The Science Demo Guy's website has free STEM and Engineering Design Process posters and experiments to download and print.
    • NASA has amazing resources for educators, including free projects, lesson plans, videos, and interactives! Students can join the competitions for free when you set up a free Future Engineers account for them. 
    • Sign up for a free Mystery Science membership and receive access to tons of awesome standard aligned lesson plans and projects. 
    • The Exploratorium lets you search by content area for experiments with inexpensive household items and materials.
    • TeachEngineering is a free K to 12 STEM curriculum. 
    • Kidtown is a free comic with facts about science, nature, and people. 
    • Find STEM resources and projects with Google templates free to edit and use from the school I teach at here. 
  • The Driving Question Tubric is a free hands-on project to help students create driving questions.
  • Find web apps and tools for students to design innovations in my article, Mock It Up! 9 Tools for Learners to Design, Blueprint, and Visualize Their Innovations.
  • Get students to design using different types of paper and formats (blueprints, graph paper, grids, 3D, etc.) and give them different design challenges, such as designing for an amusement park, an art history mini-golf course, a future city, or a playground.
  • The Kentucky Virtual Library has an incredible interactive infographic that walks students through the research process! 
  • Click here  to make a copy of the Research Choice Menu template I created with recommended research websites for K-12. Edit as you like and discover kid-friendly search engines in my post, Top Research Websites, Search Engines, and a Research Choice Menu for K-12 Students.
  • Students can add research and ideas to a Linoit/Padlet sticky note board, a Bubbl.us cognitive map, Livebinders, or Wakelet. ​
  • Citizen science is defined by Oxford Dictionary as scientific work undertaken by members of the general public, often in collaboration with or under the direction of professional scientists and scientific institutions.
  • The Be Internet Awesome curriculum by Google has different activities and lessons on how to spot fake news.
  • Common Sense Education has a free K to 12 curriculum that covers information literacy and digital citizenship.
Social Emotional Learning  Supporting Students So They Don't Get Frustrated Research Websites 
  • Fact Monster is a search engine that features Frank, the friendly monster, who helps with facts, homework, trivia, games, and quizzes.
  • DOGO News is a website and iOS/Android app for K to 12 students to find current events and research based articles. Each article gives an easy citation for students to copy and include as well as images and videos.
  • The Kids Should See This is probably the most engaging search results for students who will find viral gifs and videos about their topics.
  • Science Journal for Kids has a pdf with assessment questions, videos, and an area for further research by asking a scientist.
  • The Creative Commons Search Engine and WikiMedia Commons are two wonderful search engines to find images, videos, and other multimedia free to use in projects or presentations as long as the author is attributed appropriately.
  • Kiddle is a safe visual search engine for kids.
  • KidzSearch is a Google filtered search which features KidzTube videos and educational games on the front page.
  • Ducksters is a search engine with different categories for a general subject search like history, science, geography, and more.
  • NatGeoKids is a website with games, trivia, and articles about animals and the world. My students love this website. We also like learning more about countries with the interactive world map.
  • Science News for Students provides vocabulary lists and readability scores for each article. This is for grades 6 to 12.
  • KidsClick is a web search site designed for kids by librarians with kid-friendly results!
  • Kid Rex is another kid-friendly search engine with a simple colorful interface.
  • Safe Search Kids is powered by Google to deliver filtered search results.
  • Kid’s Search is a safe and fun way to search the Internet.
  • Choosito is a student search engine and digital library. Sign up for a free trial.
  • The Library of Congress provides archived newspapers, patents, historical documents, and images for students to search and discover information about a topic.

Bookmarks