Online Resources | Innovative Tools and Materials

SPIE has assembled this list of websites containing lesson plans, activities, demonstrations and free materials to provide teaching resources for educators. Use these resources to bring the excitement of optics into your classroom!

• Eclipse Live Website  The University of Applied Sciences in Offenburg provides live broadcasts of eclipses along with explanations of the phenomena
• USA Science and Engineering Festival Expos and activities on science and engineering
• NSDL The National Science Digital Library
• National Engineers Week Foundation. Find programs designed to reach out to current and future generations of engineering talent.  
• Cascade Pass - Publisher of a book series encouraging young girls in the sciences
• GT Labs. Comics that tell true stories about scientists.
• Newport Glass Works Education Kits
• Exploring Careers in Lasers, Photonics, and Holography. Career advice from the HoloWorld website.
• HoloWorld All you want to know about holograms.
• The Exploratorium
• The Exploratorium Science Snacks, Snacks about Light
• MIT Holography Museum The collection contains works representing the artistic and technical evolution of the medium, created by some of the world's foremost holographers.
• Science Made Simple - Beyond The Rainbow - The Invisible World
• Girl Scouts GirlsGoTech project
• TeachEngineering.com - Browse standards based K-12 curriculum modules
• Little Shop of Physics! Colorado State University's hands-on science outreach program
• scienceworks
• Engineer, Go For It!
• Math Moves U. Raytheon's MathMovesU is an innovative program designed to engage middle school students with math when their interest in the subject typically declines.
• Cool Science for Curious Kids
• Physics Quest, a middle school competition that consists of four physical experiments centered on a mystery.
• Engineering is Elementary (EiE), the EiE program aims to foster engineering and technological literacy among children.
• Bright Future, a card game about sustainability
• Science News for kids
• Brain Cake, for girls 11 - 17 and their parents, teachers and mentors.
• Try Science is your gateway to experience the excitement of contemporary science and technology though on and offline interactivity with science and technology centers worldwide.
• Making Science Make Sense, Bayer Corp. sponsored STEM education website.
• Sally Ride Science, from astrobiology to zoology-Sally Ride Science is all science, all the time.
• Canon Science Lab, What is Light?
• Kindergarten-lessons, Light Science Activities for Kids
• Kids' Science Challenge, an annual competition for 3rd to 6th graders to submit experiments and problems for REAL scientists and engineers to solve.
• Exploring the Science of Light
• Optics for Kids The Science and Engineering behind Light
• Teacher's Lab--The Science of Light Part of the Annenberg project to help teachers and students understand the basic principles of light.

• Photonik Academy in Jena Germany

• Science of Light, Professor Beaker's science resources for primary grade students

• A Kid's Guide to Light A listing of activities and resources for young people interested in learning about light and for adults interested in helping them.
•  Make Your Own 3-D Glasses Simple Wiki-How instructions for making a pair of 3-D glasses 
• Integrating Sphere Demo How to Build a Cheap Integrating Sphere for Color Light Demonstrations
• Boy Scouts Engineering Merit Badge 

• Look Up to the Stars - Traveling Astronomy Show

  Videos  

• Dragon Fly TV - Light and Color
• Design Squad
• Photonics Careers - Advice from leaders in the optics and photonics community.
• Photonics Engineering - A behind-the-scenes look at engineers' day-to-day work 
• When Things Get Small – Emmy award winning video takes a comical look at nanoscience
•  PHOTON Exploration Videos – Short demonstrations explaining basic optics principles

PDFs 

• Laser Fountain Demonstration
• Laser Microphone Demonstration

Educators

• NSTA Communities (Member only) This website brings together science education professionals to interact, mingle, share activities and resources, form groups, offer advice, and get help from the community members.
• Teacher' Domain. Digital Media for the Classroom and Professional Development
• Introduction to Photonics, Online courses for educators
• PHOTON2, Introduction to Photonics for Teachers
• Teaching Materials, from NASA Spacelink
• Bibliography of Classical Optics (Approx. 1500 titles, 1980-1993, in PDF format 230K, compiled by Douglas Goodman, Polaroid Corp.)

• Integrated Teaching and Learning Program & Laboratory, University of Colorado at Boulder

• Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education

• Protons for Breakfast,A 6-week course for people interested in science and its impact on our lives.

General Education

• Edutopia