Engineering & Design Thinking 

Engineering & Design Thinking

Discover Engineering provides a variety of  STEM/engineering activities and lessons for a variety of ages that can be searched by engineering discipline, age and science topic.
E4USA provides an on ramping curriculum to help students learn about engineering as a profession, and to help students develop the mindsets and practices of engineers.
Engineering - Go For Itwww.egfi-k12.org/about/!  Teacher and student resources, lessons, news and newsletter with information about opportunities and events. Developed by the American Society for Engineering Education.
Engineering is Elementary provides STEM curricula for pre-K to elementary learners, with resources for both teachers and families. Created in partnership with Boston's Museum of Science. 
THE FESTIVAL OF URGENT REINVENTIONS is a free two-day virtual experience. Part conference, part competition – the festival is a combination of talks and workshops by prominent change makers, and actionable briefs tackling the world’s most urgent and systemic issues. (View on YouTube)
hundrED's Innovation Collections showcases innovative ideas from global contributors. 
MIT Full STEAM Ahead provides Interdisciplinary Engineering curriculum and project resources originally designed for families during remote learning.  
Daily Engineering News. High interest articles that are accessible for HS level readers.
The James Dyson Foundation has developed Engineering Design Challenges for families and schools.  Check site for downloadable challenge cards.
PBS Design Squad offers engineering design challenges, games, and sample projects.  Targeted more toward middle school students, but many materials apply to all age levels.
Novel Engineering is an integrated pedagogical approach to engineering and literacy, in which students solve problems for characters or individuals in novels, short stories, nonfiction stories and/or news articles.  Developed by Tufts University's Engineering Education program.
TeachEngineering is a large database of engineering curricula, lessons, labs and design challenges, searchable by topic, age and lesson length. 
The Tech Interactive from Bowers Institute provides a variety of design challenges and career exploration resources.
Try Engineering provides lessons, career exploration materials and outreach activities. Sponsored by IEEE.
WhiteBox Learning is a complete Standards-Based STEM Learning System for Engineering, Science, and Technology Education classrooms, grades 6-12. Completely web-based, students can design, analyze, and simulate their designs, hundreds of times, from a web browser, and compete with other students throughout their district. Fully-Integrated Teacher LMS is included.

Building Techniques

Blog post from Teachers are Terrific about how to create cardboard attachments.

Competitions

The Fluid Power Action Challenge is a competition that challenges middle or high school students to solve an engineering problem using fluid power. The students work in teams to design and build a fluid power mechanism and then compete against other teams in a timed competition.
KidWind Competitions
​This year, KidWind is offering virtual competitions for both solar and wind challenges.  They also have a simulation challenge (contact Michael Arquin for information about scholarships) and a MacGyver challenge. 
The Biomimicry Institute's Youth Design Challenge is a hands-on, project-based learning experience that provides classroom and informal educators with an engaging framework to  introduce bio-inspired design and an interdisciplinary lens on science, engineering, and environmental literacy. It gives middle and high school students a unique STEM  experience and empowers them to envision solutions to social and environmental challenges.

Societies & Organizations

Web-Based Tools 

TinkerCad is a free 3D-modeling and design program.