Community Tech Press is an NSF DRK-12 funded curriculum development project with Somerville Public Schools, the climate tech start-up Transaera, and the science media experts Science Communication Network. This project takes a civic-oriented approach to middle-school engineering learning. Students engage in engineering to critically evaluate climate technologies affecting their local community. Then, they construct and convey multilingual messages about climate tech for an audience of family members, community groups, or civic leaders. The research team is exploring how this critical technology journalism approach influences engineering learning among 6th-grade youth, including students from multilingual families. Co-PIs are Chelsea Andrews, Kristen Wendell, and Greses Pérez.

The Community Based Engineering (CBE) approach introduces early-career elementary teachers to engineering as a way of tackling problems that matter to them in their students' lives. Our goal is to help educators help all children and teachers feel empowered as scientists and engineers by investigating and solving problems in their own communities. Check out the CBE website to learn more about this project.