National Engineers Week and WGBH, the producers of ZOOM™ , are collaborating to create ZOOM INTO ENGINEERING. A combination of ZOOM's fun, kid-tested activities with the opportunity to interact with real engineers, ZOOM INTO ENGINEERING takes kids in grades 2 – 6 to a new level—learning from role models how ZOOM's science activities apply in the real world. ZOOM INTO ENGINEERING training and outreach events are proliferating all over the country.
Providing children with positive images of engineers—professionals who use science and technology to solve problems—has never been more critical. During the last one hundred years a technological revolution has improved the quality of our lives and engineers have led this revolution. Yet, children and adults do not understand the engineer’s role in society or, more simply, what an engineer does.
EWeek and WGBH will blend their unique strengths to improve the image of engineering, particularly among elementary school children. Children, parents and teachers associate the ZOOM brand with fun and learning. National Engineers Week is unique in its ability to mobilize a corps of more than 45,000 volunteer engineers who will enrich the students’s ZOOM experience by providing hands-on, real-world applications and role models. Also, the ZOOM television show has a strong appeal among girls and minority children, while EWeek is the only ongoing outreach effort in the volunteer engineering community with a successful and steady track record in this area. It is critical to put more girls and minorities on an earlier track to engineering, as demonstrated by many studies, including those done by the National Science Foundation.
ZOOM INTO ENGINEERING will provide engineer volunteers with the tools and training they need to work effectively with young children. A new tool kit provides a printed guide with hands-on activities and strategies, CD ROM tutorial and more. At a recent ZOOM INTO ENGINEERING Summit, WGBH professional outreach staff trained more than 100 volunteers representing 33 regions across the United States. ZOOM INTO ENGINEERING Day will occur in Washington, D.C., in February during National Engineers Week 2002.
Beginning now, and continuing for the next three years, ZOOM INTO ENGINEERING will engage tens of thousands of engineer volunteers and more than a million elementary school children. Few outreach programs introducing engineering are geared to this age group. ZOOM INTO ENGINEERING may be the only one bringing engineer role models to these children. Only through this kind of personal contact will children and their advocates say, “I want to learn more,” or “I want to be an engineer.”
To find out more about the ZOOM Into Engineering toolkit and to order, click here.
To find out how organizations across the country are ZOOMing Into Engineering, click here.
