Berkshire Region

One-Week Institute for Grades 3-8 Educators

Thinkers and Tinkerers: Using Biomimicry to Teach Engineering and Life Science

During this hands-on, minds-on, inquiry-based professional development institute, educators:

• Immersed themselves in the world of innovation and problem solving.

• Discovered how nature’s designs can connect science content to real-world design challenges to produce models, tools and prosthetics, and learned how to bring the design challenge experience to their own students.

• Examined examples of biomimicry to explore how nature’s own innovations can help us tackle health and environmental issues.

• Met with research and design engineers to learn how they develop high performance plastics, agri-nutrients, polymers and metals. Participants then observed how engineers use polarized light to test the stress strength of a product.

• Experienced how the engineering design process works to produce anatomically correct models of human organs and other products for medical study and testing.

• Learned how to create a science center at their schools to build these experiences into inquiry-based investigations for their students.

Partners & Collaborators: Flying Cloud Institute; MASS MoCA; The Chamberlain Group; Sabic Manufacturing; Miss Hall’s School; Mass Audubon’s Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary; Nature Matters