Engineer with Design Squad Nation
The PBS TV series and website Design Squad™ (and its spin-off series Design Squad™ Nation) provide teachers with standards-based resources to make engineering come alive in their classrooms.
On TV Design Squad is a reality competition series where eight teenagers learn to think smart, build fast, and contend with a wild array of engineering challenges. With Design Squad Nation, engineer co-hosts Judy and Adam travel across the country, working side by side with kids and using engineering to turn kids' dreams into reality. On the Web Design Squad provides students with a forum to brainstorm, submit project ideas, and respond to the ideas of others through sketches and real world prototypes
Educational Resources
Design Squad’s six educator guides containing 40 hands-on engineering activities—aligned to both the National Science Education Standards (NRC) and the Standards for Technology Literacy (ITEA)—enable children to exercise their own design skills, tapping into their ingenuity and teaching them how to think like engineers.
Goals: Design Squad's resources are designed to:
- Deepen students' understanding of the engineering design process
- Provide opportunities for teamwork and hands-on problem solving
- Present engineers as creative problem solvers who design things that matter and improve people's lives
- Increase students' motivation to learn science, technology, math, and engineering
Featured Videos for Teachers
Sound
In this video segment, two teams compete to create unique but usable instruments for a local band. In the process, the teams learn about the physics of sound and music and then apply this knowledge to the construction of their own instruments. Watch to find out which instruments the band finds worthy of debuting in their next live show.
Suspension Bridge
In this video segment, students employ the concepts of tension and compression to build a suspension bridge without the aid of power tools.
Tissue Engineering
In this video segment, see where medical science meets tissue engineering in an implantable device designed to help people suffering from liver disease.
Truss Bridge
In this video segment, students employ the concepts of tension and compression as they build a truss bridge without the aid of power tools.
Visit Design Squad Nation on PBS KIDS for games and resources just for kids.
