Career and Technology Foundations Grades 5-9

Find models, furniture and other items for your Makerspace.

This community has information about their free software for teachers, design software and competitions.

This community uses 3D printers to create free 3D printed hands and arms for those in need.

Thingiverse is a design community for discovering, making, and sharing 3D printable things. Explore the collections for inspiration.

Find projects for your class; browse by grade level or subject.

Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite.

This is an open-source parametric 3D modeler made primarily to design real-life objects of any size.

This is a collection of ideas and instructions for circuit projects and 3D printing.

Pinshape has a selection of premium (cost) and free STL files available for you to download and print.

Access the free 3D modeling software or educational packages.

A search engine that specializes in finding models for 3D printing

Thingiverse is a design community for discovering, making, and sharing 3D printable things. Explore the collections for inspiration.

This is a free and simple app for 3D design, electronics, and coding.

This is a search engine for 3D printable models. Some of the models are free and some have a cost.

Browse through over 15,000 open designs that are ready to print.

A team of architects from New Delhi crafted a terracotta cooling system that looks like a giant beehive.

A lesson plan that focuses on design thinking to get students to build a solar oven (Grade 6)

Alfredo Moser's invention, a lamp made out of a plastic bottle filled with water and bleach, has been spreading rapidly around the world and it's expected to be in one million homes by early next year.

Expanding on the use of the Moser Light, a group in the Philippines thought of a simple green way to get the lights to work at night.

Activities and videos from PBS that challenge students to think about developing green technology.

How do you cool a building without air conditioning? Using an approach called biomimicry, see how architect Mick Pearce harnessed the ingenuity of termites to design a natural cooling system for the largest commercial building in Zimbabwe.

M Sivasamy has created a clay fridge that keeps vegetables, eggs, and curd fresh for up to four days without electricity. Watch how it works!

Students become product engineers in a bouncy ball factory as they design and prototype a polymer bouncy ball that meets specific requirements: must be spherical in shape, cannot disintegrate when thrown on the ground, and, of course, must bounce.

A detailed lesson plan for Grades 6-8 students to design a working air filter.

Many people have never attempted to build their own furniture. But a young designer named Nick demonstrates a painless process for designing and constructing attractive, sturdy chairs from cardboard.

A free-to-download software that lets students build with virtual lego.

This is the YouTube channel for Make: magazine; the channel is filled with videos about maker projects, including tips and ideas.

This site has an extensive collection of resources for getting started with makerspaces and making. Educators will also find project ideas and professional learning.

What can you make with things around the classroom or house? First, choose an activity you are interested in. Next, choose an item and spin the wheel to see what you could make.

Ideas for making machines, toys, and experiments from things others might throw away.

This is a helpful tool to help you figure out what kind of glue you need. Put in the two items that you are trying to glue together to get tips and products that would work best.

The oldest glue in the world is over 8,000 years old and comes from a cave near the Dead Sea. Today, we have enough types of tape and glue to build and repair almost anything. But what gives glue and tape their stickiness? And is one stronger than the other?