From tackling the issues of microplastics and urban heat islands, to addressing clean energy solutions through the use of wind turbines and underwater solar panels, the Biomimicry Institute’s 2022-23 Youth Design Challenge (YDC) winners have offered unique, nature-inspired ideas to solve local design challenges. The YDC, now in its sixth year, serves as a bridge from core concepts to advanced project-focused STEM learning for middle and high school students across the world.
As both a teacher in a public school for over 20 years, and a nonfiction writer, the question of how to deeply engage my learners and readers is always on my mind. What is their entry point? How do they connect? I’ve discovered there are so many ways.
To help formal and non-formal educators learn from each other and pass on creative and effective ways to teach biomimicry, the Sharing Stories Project was born. The project’s interviewers reached out to educators across the globe who are using biomimicry to engage young people in solution-based thinking and inspire them to look at the natural world from a new perspective.
Calling all middle and high school educators! The Youth Design Challenge opened registration today for the 2021-22 program cycle, and you can gain access to engaging instructional models aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). If you’re new to us, the Youth Design Challenge serves as a bridge from core concepts to advanced project-focused learning for students. We equip learners with the tools they need to solve the world’s pressing problems using the teachings of nature.
COVID-19, rapid climate change, racial tension, and political unrest have impacted Earth’s entire ecosystem; and in light of the ongoing global changes, teachers, parents, and students are getting creative in transforming the educational landscape. Whether at home, at school, or virtually online, there are a myriad of ways to tap into nature’s lesson plans to find inspiration, hope, healing, and creative problem solving techniques.
Our world feels very different right now, but this difference can provide us with a wonderful opportunity: an opportunity to teach ourselves and our students how to adapt to and learn from everything that nature has to offer. We hope to offer educators and parents an introductory guide on how to bring nature into the classroom, or more appropriately, take the classroom outside.
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