Technology and Building Sites

This page is one small part of Good Sites for Kids!

Now with a Morse Code and Cryptology section!

Look for to see what's been added lately!

Some of the descriptions on this page are kinda long. They have to be, to describe the technology involved.

Actionbits "Action Bits is a series of in-depth technology skills classes developed by a team of professionals — experienced teachers & veterans of the high-tech industry — committed to teaching kids the computer skills they will need to excel in school...and beyond!" Parts of this site require a login, which you may get upon request. Besides tech modules, Lynne's Library features many elementary through high school links to some very good math, language arts, science, health and other ed sites. Pretty cool.

  Activity TV  This truly excellent site has at least a couple of hundred good instructional videos on subjects like paper airplanes, science projects, magic, making jewelry, crafts, origami, juggling, cheerleading, cooking (!), and more! It also has Lego action videos and several good games! The videos are really world-class, with adult instruction, printable parts lists, and recipes. Projects on the videos can be accessed by skill levels, categories, most viewed, etc. You need to look at Activity TV!

Anatomy of a Refrigerator "You likely have one, but do you know how it works?" Find out at this interactive site!

Bridge Building Contests We've seen some great popsicle stick bridges made by students over the years. Usually this involves how much weight the bridge can bear. These contests teach the value of following precise directions ( kids need more practice at this skill), as well as precise measurements. If you need help organizing one of these, here are some sites to get you started. Here is a typical bridge contest site. Here is a how-to site with examples. Here is a site with techniques and pointers. Thanks Steve K.for this idea.

Build a Toy Car from ABCya! lets kids choose from various options to build a toy racer and print it out!

Castles on the Web "offers an extensive database of all things Castle related including a castle photo gallery, free castle web pages, hundreds of castle links, castle site of the day, castles for kids and more!" For our favorite trio of 10 year old castle freaks, and a few hundred thousand more like them.

Cool Zone for Kids from Utility Services of Alaska has a great site about water! The Story of Drinking Water, water FAQs, games, Water Cycle printables, how water is treated to make it potable, more.

Cyberchase "an online destination designed to captivate, entertain, and improve problem-solving and math skills is now bigger and better than ever!" The Games section has over 40 good applied math games. The Science section has activities plus an outstanding, ongoing series of Cyberchase Quest games. The technology focused Inventors' Workshop game is a series of exercises in building machines that work!

EepyBird Now with Extreme Sticky Note Experiments, too! "The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments: What happens when you combine 200 liters of Diet Coke and over 500 Mentos mints? It's amazing and completely insane." Yes, this is that site you've heard about. Among other projects, it duplicates many of the famous outdoor water fountains of Europe using Diet Cokes and Mentos. Lots of streaming videos of it, too. Might make a neat end of year outdoor science exercise. Thanks to Sam Fields, high school science teacher in Washington State.

EdHeads! THE primo kid technology site! Interactive online activities teach about simple machines, virtual surgery, weather, and tons more recently added. Lesson plans, too!

"Edheads provides free, educational online games focused on science, math, and critical thinking. Our activities are designed to meet both state and national standards. We partner with corporations, universities, and school systems throughout the United States, which help us research, design, and test our activities every step of the way. Not only do teachers and students appreciate our free activities, Edheads has been recognized by almost every major award on the Web for our excellent educational content.

So click the "Choose an Activity" tab at the top of the page to dive into an activity and let the fun and learning begin!"

Egg Dropping sites. Not Egg Drop Soup, we hope! These sites cover organizing your own egg dropping contests, where physics meets engineering, and hopefully the eggs don't smash! An Egg Drop Contest with rules, from Centenary College of Louisiana. Egg Drop is a contest recipe from California, part of a site that also has a lot of other good activities listed up on top. UC Berkeley has a Junior High Egg Drop Contest with rules, etc. You get the concept. Thanks, Bridge School teacher "Plet" G. for the inspiration.

Energy Kids featuring Energy Ant: learn all about where we get our energy and how we use it. Loaded with facts, games, and activities. The Glossary explains every energy term you ever heard of.

Engineer Girl lets middle school girls find out more about careers in engineering. "Turn imagination into reality with a future in engineering! Engineering careers, women engineers, what to take in high school to get ready (hint: math & science), essay contest, Ask an Engineer, more. From The National Academy of Sciences.

Engineer Your Life "Welcome to Engineer Your Life, a guide to engineering careers for high school girls! Imagine what life would be like without pollution controls to preserve the environment, life-saving medical equipment, or low-cost building materials for fighting global poverty. All this takes engineering. In very real and concrete ways, women who become engineers save lives, prevent disease, reduce poverty, and protect our planet. Dream Big. Love what you do. Become an engineer." Videos of successful women engineers of various ethnic backgrounds expose girls to all they could do and be in the field. From The National Academy of Sciences. Thank you Shelly.

Energy Kids featuring Energy Ant: learn all about where we get our energy and how we use it. Loaded with facts, games, and activities. The Glossary explains every energy term you ever heard of.

Engineering Interact is Interactive science & engineering for 9-11 year olds. Play the games to learn about the physics of light, sound, forces, electricity, and the Solar System. Good loud and flashy games that make kids think. From the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, UK, serving your educational needs since 1209 AD. (Sorry, boffins din't say which College...)

Fantastic Contraption "A fun online physics puzzle game!" Build machines to do 21 different tasks. Every user-built machine different. Teaches logic and basic engineering principles. Thanks, Mel S.

Find the Technology - Computer Vocabulary from ABCya! Kids have to find various computer peripherals and digital equipment in a colorful workshop. Use the fewest possible clicks.

Flight site from NASA, for kids, with lesson plans for teachers. What is Aeronautics, History of Flight, Dynamics of Flight, Airplanes, Engines, and Fun & Games, including a learning game about the Wright brothers!

Lessons In Electric Circuits "A free series of textbooks on the subjects of electricity and electronics." Excellent free learning, just bring a brain and the ability to think and read. Consists of six online books: DC, AC, Semiconductors, Digital, Reference, and Experiments. Volume I starts with static electricity and ends with explanations of capacitors and inductors. It's free, it's good, and it's on the web.

Logicly - an online interactive logic gate simulator. Lets kids build their own logic setups to see what happens. Start with simple AND & OR gates and try to make the bulb light up, work up to complicated projects (for kids) like adders. This teaches logic and shows how the various gates work. Instructions (figured out by our crack team of analysts): Click and drag components onto the work space. Click on the circles on components and drag the mouse to another component to create wiring. Turn the simulation off and on in the lower right corner of the workspace. To remove a component, click on it and the press the keyboard Delete button. Reload the page to clear the entire workspace if you need to. "Logicly simulates the boolean algebra performed by logic gates, which are a vital part of digital circuitry and computer achitecture. Built by Josh Tynjala with Adobe Flex, this application showcases his upcoming open source wiring components. Questions or Comments? Send an email to josh@zeuslabs.us." It's fun & very cool, haven't done this in years.

Logism "An educational tool for designing and simulating digital logic circuits, featuring a simple-to-learn interface, hierarchical circuits, wire bundles, and a large component library. As a Java application, it can run on many platforms. " "Excellent tool for learning, simple and effective." "Logism is an excellent tool for exploring how digital circuits work and makes for a tremendously useful teaching aid." This excellent GNU General Public License (GPL) free download comes courtesy of sourceforge.net. Small download - 6.6 Mb.

Invention Smithsonian - Centerpieces Lemelson Center virtual exhibits and explorations. Find out about all sorts of famous inventions, from Edison to quartz watches and electric guitars! Invention at Play is the fun and interactive part for kids! There are four activities here, the two we like best are Puzzle Blocks and Tinker Ball. Both are challenging thinking games that are fun, too! Thanks, Bevin.

Zoom Inventors and Inventions Zoom does it again with yet another big collection of facts! Inventors & inventions indexed alphabetically, by time, by type, women inventors, Afro-American inventors, much more.

Navigation Education Materials Ten middle school science lesson plans ready to go! These teach navigation, mapping, topo maps, GPS, and space navigation! Excellent introduction to a technical subject. From the renowned Institute of Navigation. Because we need to educate kids in important technical subjects.

Packetville About time we got a kid-friendly site about the mechanics of the internet! These fun games and related activities help kids learn how the internet works. Peter Packet Server, Router, and Wireless Space games let kids move their data packers around the internet to help kids in Third World countries, while fighting viruses and rebooting routers on the way. Example: moving information to help Haitian kids get clean water. Kids learn a lot about the internet and conditions in impoverished areas at the same time. Packet Riders for ages 8-11 and Hacker Busters for ages 12-14. Also has instructional materials for educators. You can play online or download the games. Requires Shockwave. Also features "Career Capture - This is the place to meet some smart women who understand how technology unlocks the door to very cool careers. Explore their stories and create your own scrapbook!" (.exe file, BIG download of 145Mb) Free to you from Cisco, one of the biggest internet outfits. Found by Mattie I., former coworker.

Science: It's A Girl Thing | Facebook "Welcome to the official Facebook Page of Science: It's A Girl Thing. Get exclusive content and interact with Science: It's A Girl Thing right from Facebook." Four downloadable .pdf good and easy science activities for kids, more will be added later. There are also videos of three of the activities being done with kids. This is a work in progress so keep checking back.

Simple Machines Great basic simple machines site from EdHeads. Has animation, sounds, and very good interactive activities.

Simple Machines web page from Kennesaw State University of Georgia. This is a list of links to good sites that cover simple machines, online and offline activities, printouts, and lesson plans. A good resource for busy teachers.

Simple Machines Spotlight.  Franklin Institute's simple machines page. Good explanations and some activities, too.

Stonehenge Panorama 3-D panorama in Shockwave, taken from the center of 4,500 year old Stonehenge. Scroll around and see what it looks like! Think of the planning that went into building this without the help of modern machinery.

Technology from Extreme Science. The techno section of the larger site.

Technology and Social Science from SCORE History/Social Science is a whole section on technology integrated into Social Science - with its own lesson plans and ideas for teachers!

Touchstone Energy Kids Zone "a cool place where you can learn about electricity, energy savings and electrical safety. Energy is part of our daily lives. Every time you watch television or turn on a light you are using electricity. Here at the Touchstone Energy Kids Zone we have some fun games and activities that will help you learn about energy and energy efficiency. We have lots of information you can share with your family and friends." Pretty good site, with easy explanation of electricity transmission, how to save electricity, games and activities for kids, and a Teacher Zone.

The Virtual Microscope from University of Illinois. Oh you've got to get this for kids! Amazing closeups! Plug in a digital projector and show these on the wall! "The Virtual Microscope is a NASA-funded project that provides simulated scientific instrumentation for students and researchers worldwide as part of NASA's Virtual Laboratory initiative. This site serves as home base for the Imaging Technology Group's contributions to that project—namely virtual microscopes and the multi-dimensional, high-resolution image datasets they view. Currently we provide 90 samples totaling over 62 gigapixels of image data. The Virtual Microscope, which is available for free download supports functionality from electron, light, and scanning probe microscopes, datasets for these instruments, training materials to learn more about microscopy, and other related tools. The project is open source and the code is available on Sourceforge." More info at the site. Note: This program requires Java.

We Choose The Moon is an interactive experience recreating the historic Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in real time. Once where only three men made the trip, now millions can. Live event begins 8:02 AM EDT July 16, 2009, with launch at 9:32 a.m., exactly 40 years after Apollo 11 lifted off. Going in Astronomy, Social Studies, and Technology.

Webwise Computer Tutor from the BBC. " Welcome to Computer Tutor. I'll show you how to use a mouse, keyboard and computer screen." We know an awful lot of elementary age girls who are becoming addicted to this excellent, patient, interactive, kid-friendly site, and we're glad they showed it to us! Kids really do learn a lot about how to work a computer. The BBC does it again.

Morse Code and Cryptology section

CryptoKids™ America's Future Codemakers & Codebreakers. This is an educational site from the NSA. "Welcome to the NSA/CSS Kids’ page. We’re the CryptoKids and we love cryptology. What’s cryptology? Cryptology is making and breaking codes. It’s so cool. We make codes so we can send secret messages to our friends. And we try to figure out what other people are writing about by breaking their codes. It’s a lot of fun."

Morse code from Kids.net.au, an excellent Australian internet gateway. Online encyclopedia entry covers the basics.

Morse Code Cryptography lesson plan from Kids Kreate. Use spelling lists to learn and practice Morse Code.

Morse Code Messaging lesson plan from education.com.

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