Contests & Grants

Kids’ Science Challenge

YouTube Space Lab Challenge OpensKid scientists all over the country have been inventing new kinds of packaging, space food, and toys and games for animals. It’s all part of the Kids’ Science Challenge, the elementary-school science competition in the United States. Created by Jim Metzner and funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, each year the KSC selects three science topics and a group of scientists and engineers. Students are asked to propose an original idea or experiment that relates to one of these topics. The winning student in each category will then have the opportunity to meet and work with the respective scientist, in addition to winning great prizes.

Deadline: Feb. 29, 2012
Details:http://www.kidsciencechallenge.com

Web 20.11 Free Resource and Contest

Discovery Education joined CDW-G and SMART Technologies to create Web 20.11, an online destination that offers free resources in media literacy, Internet safety, Web 2.0, presentation tools, and blogs by education experts. Teachers can also enter the Web 20.11 Tech Tune-up Sweepstakes for a chance to win an AverMedia AverVision F50 Document Camera, a trip to ISTE 2012 in San Diego, and a $1,500 digitalmedia grant from Discovery Education. Two runners-up will each receive a Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet.

Deadline: December 31, 2011
Details:http://web2011.discoveryeducation.com/

YouTube Space Lab Challenge Opens

YouTube and Lenovo, in cooperation with Space Adventures and space agencies including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), have announced YouTube Space Lab, a worldwide initiative that challenges 14- to 18-year-old students to design a science experiment that can be performed in space. The two winning experiments will be conducted aboard the International Space Station and live streamed on YouTube.

Students in two age categories, 14 to 16 years old and 17 to 18 years old, either alone or in groups of up to three, may submit a YouTube video describing their experiment to YouTube.com/SpaceLab.

Deadline: December 7, 2011
Details: YouTube.com/SpaceLab

Students Solve Real- World Challenges

The Conrad Foundation has launched the 2011–2012 Spirit of Innovation Challenge, which invites high school teams to use STEM skills to develop commercially viable technology-based products. An interested student team drafts an online abstract that addresses five questions about the team’s innovative idea for first-round judging. From there selected semifinalists in each challenge category—Aerospace Exploration, Clean Energy, and Health and Nutrition— develop a business plan, a technical plan, and a graphical representation of the team’s product or innovation. The top five teams from each category will travel to the annual Innovation Summit, where they will vie for awards.