Breakfast Club Blog
The BOOST Breakfast Club Blog is a curated space where bloggers from around the world contribute content on a continual basis about a variety of topics relevant to in and out-of-school time. The BOOST Breakfast Club blog is at the heart of an ongoing dialogue where expanded learning and education professionals share their personal thoughts and stories from the in and out-of-school time field. They also tell us what they ate for breakfast!
The BOOST Breakfast Club Blog is Brain Food for In and Out-of-School Time Leaders!
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At-home Learning in Crisis Times (with the Cat in the Hat)
Largely at a loss Nobody has any very good answers amid the anxiety and trauma of these COVID-19 times. But efforts to help, share, and encourage each other have overflowed in online education communities, to the benefit of educators, students, and families. Floods of ideas and resources have come from countless individuals and organizations to help the millions of families whose households have suddenly become classrooms. Please, for example, go get a free download of our coloring book, What’s ...Read More
How to Start the Afterschool Engineering Club You’ve Always Wanted
For all the popularity of STEM activities outside of school time, engineering remains something of a neglected stepchild. “Full STEM Ahead,” an America After 3 PM survey, found that the favored siblings in the STEM family, science and math, feature in a preponderance of available programs, 60 and 45 percent, respectively. Technology and engineering share the table scraps, named in less than a third of program offerings. And with the greater share of these programs focused on computing and progra...Read More
Books to Help Build Elementary Students’ Understanding of Engineering
Thoughts Turn In Springtime … For the last several weeks, the view from my office on the third floor has been of treetops filling out with leaves. Looking down to the ground, I can see flowers coming into bloom, bushes becoming green, and animals of all kinds scurrying, hopping, or flying about, urgently concerned with their appointed, springtime tasks. It’s a delight and a wonder to see the natural world coming to life in such vivid fashion. … To Tech? But here’s what I have been touching and u...Read More
Arab Women Make a Charge into Engineering
In the face of strong headwinds… In Saudi Arabia, women can’t drive. In Lebanon, sexual harassment is legal. And even in the United Arab Emirates – relatively advanced on gender issues among predominantly Muslim countries – men can physically discipline their wives. Across all 22 states in the Arab world, women face legal and cultural obstacles unfamiliar to women in the United States. Arab Women Push Ahead One area, though, in which Arab women in fact face lesser obstacles and achieve at a high...Read More
It’s (Out-of-School) Time for Engineering
In at least two ways, out-of-school programs are little different from their school-day counterparts. For one, STEM education is popular and widely available. Nearly 70 percent of out-of-school programs offer some kind of STEM content. For another, engineering, the “E” in STEM, is the least developed part of the picture. As with K-12 schools, out-of-school programs focus far more on science and math. Engineering, the driving force behind all the tools and technologies that make our l...Read More
Fun for the Zoo: Engineering Enrichment and Enhancement
Fun for the Zoo: Engineering Enrichment and Enhancement. In our Fun for the Zoo class, student “fungineers” are challenged to invent enrichment items that provide stimulation, challenge, and novelty to enhance the behavioral, physical, social, cognitive, and psychological well being of zoo animals. In the wild, animals must forage or hunt for food, and protect themselves against predators, but in the zoo, most of their needs are provided for by the keepers. So, enrichment must be pro...Read More
Engineering Challenges Promote 21st-Century Skills and Engage Youth
Asia Society and BOOST Collaborative are partnering to create a series of blogs on global learning in out-of-school time. This blog entry was originally published on EdWeek’s Global Learning Blog. This entry was written by guest bloggers Natacha Meyer, Senior Curriculum Developer, and Tania Tauer, Senior Curriculum Developer, from the Museum of Science Boston. STEM Training Today’s unprecedented push to train students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) has been pri...Read More
Celebrate Lights On Afterschool. Hands-On Projects Inspire Students to Find the Engineer Within
“I made a new friend today,” a girl enthusiastically shared as she and her fifth-grade peers cleaned up after making polymers. These girls come together once a week and work through science and engineering activities in an afterschool program hosted by Techbridge. We challenge them to work with students that they don’t know and measure success when we see them supporting each other. It’s a sign that afterschool programs are not only fostering and expanding opportunities f...Read More