Hi Richard, Thank you so much for your comment. DESIGN SQUAD GLOBAL (DSG) videos and activities have been used by educators in their classrooms all across the country. We have found a very active community on social media of teachers posting images of their students using DSG activities. We have also recently expanded globally with our DSG clubs inspiring your children around the globe to explore a field of engineering.

Hello Janet, Thank you for your comment. DESIGN SQUAD GLOBAL (DSG) is designed for middle school aged children however, we have all age groups participate in using our activities. Our resources can be reached through our video's, online games and building challenges. If you are not familiar with our website, please visit: www.pbskids.org/designsquad. 

DSG kid engineers get step by step guides on building and designing projects, an online space to share ideas with their peers and visual guides that will help demonstrate how to create different designs and prototypes in their own home or classroom. One of our most recent videos that I personally enjoyed was our Kid Engineer: Compost Tumbler.

Our method of teaching is to provide engaging videos and hands-on activities that children can take part in the classrooms or in afterschool programs. Anyone can introduce their children to DSG engineering activities and do them at home or in the classroom.

Hello again Janet: I wanted to follow up with a link that goes directly to our Design Squad Global Club page: pbslearningmedia.org/collection/dsgclubs . In DSG clubs, kids not only explore hands-on engineering, but they partner with a DSG club from a different country.  You can choose between two options (a 6-week or a 12-week program) and we match you with a partner club from another country. The website includes everything you need to know about how to run your club: a video introduction to how the clubs work, PDFs of the six-week and twelve-week club guides, and an online training for club leaders. The introductions to the two club guides will answer your questions about the materials and resources needed as well as discuss the pedagogy. Since we launched the DSG clubs last October, more than 230 afterschool programs in 72 U.S. cities and 25 countries have been launched. (Countries represented include Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Cambodia, China Costa Rica, Haiti, Jordan, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Swaziland, and Vietnam.)

You may also be interested in seeing our earlier Design Squad guides, which you’ll find here:http://pbskids.org/designsquad/parentseducators/A

Hello Chris, Thank you for your feedback about our program! We are thrilled that you are so pleased with it. DESIGN SQUAD GLOBAL (DSG) is designed to help parents and educators reach their learning goals by providing detailed hands–on lesson plans which allow for students to work in collaborative teams on their own.  Our resources also contain online training, slide shows, talking points, printable handouts, a list of materials to collect, and preparation tips that can help parents and educators make these informed choices and learning goals.

Hello again, Chris. To answer your question regarding the research base, Design Squad Global was implemented in two pilot rounds of seven pairs of clubs, with each round researched to better understand processes and outcomes. These findings led to recommendations for improvement to the model, in an iterative cycle of learning and improvement.

We just posted our research report on http://www.informalscience.org/  It will take 48 hours to appear on the site. It will give you much more detail how the project is contributing to the development of an evidence base around how to adapt engineering resources and the outreach process needed to work collaboratively across distances and cultures.

Hope you’ll have a chance to take a look.  

This video is part of the resources we produced for DESIGN SQUAD GLOBAL (DSG), a web-based, mobile-accessible digital hub and outreach initiative that creates new opportunities to empower middle school youth to solve real-world problems and understand the impact of engineering in a global context. DSG Clubs are an afterschool program for students aged 10-13 that are implemented through an international partnership with another club in a different country. Although we didn’t assess the impact of this individual video, we did assess the impact of the DSG Club resources as a whole. Interview data revealed that the presentation and peer review skills that were gained during the partner exchange with the partner club were a highlight of the DSG experience and Club Leaders linked this component to increased student confidence.