In celebration of its founder, Fritz Schumacher’s centenary year Practical Action have created Small Is...Challenge. Schumacher’s philosophy was based on the idea that even a small change can have a big impact on people’s lives. The challenge for students is to look at technologies from the last 100 years and...

Produced by The Centre for Industry Education Collaboration (CIEC), these resources help to put curriculum science in a real life context. In these activities, children compare plants grown in a variety of nutrients. They investigate the best conditions to grow turf for a sports pitch.

During the activities...

This activity, from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), introduces students to how sensors can be used in smart applications of electronic systems.

The resource is designed so that students will know...

This is one of a series of resources to support the use of the BBC micro:bit.

In this activity pupils will make use of the BBC micro:bit to design and create a programmable system that can control the temperature and soil moisture levels in a ‘smart’ greenhouse. They will analyse a design brief and design...

A smart material describes a material that senses and responds to an external stimulus or change in the environment, and where the change reverses when the stimulus or change is removed. This resource provides an introduction to the topic of smart materials, looking at the properties of different materials,...

A phase change material are substances that absorb or release energy when it changes its physical state, providing useful heating or cooling properties. Did you know that phase change materials were developed by NASA to keep astronauts comfortable in the extreme temperature fluctuations in space? This resource...

This resource looks at photochromic materials, exploring how they are used and their impact on space inspired products. The slides provide discussion points, investigation ideas and suggestions of practical experiments and products that will allow students to get hands-on with photochromic technology.

This resource explores the properties and uses of piezoelectric materials and quantum tunnelling composites. Taking examples from space technology, it provides a number of examples to discuss in the classroom and suggests practical experiments to give your students a hands-on examples of the technology.

Shape memory alloys (SMA) and shape memory polymers (SMP) remember their original shape, even after being significantly deformed, returning to their original shape in response to a stimulus. This resource explores the technology behind SMA's and SMP's, the properties that they bring to engineered products and...

This resource explores the topic of thermochromic materials. It provides content to explain what they are, how they are used and suggests practical experiments that will allow students to get hands-on with the material.

Aimed at primary aged students, this STEM project provides a real-life context to explore the health and environmental problems faced by the 3 billion people globally who cook on open fires or traditional cooking stoves. Children are introduced to a family in Nepal and learn about indoor air pollution from their...

This is a set of five lessons on software development for students aged 14-16.

The presentations cover the software development life cycle and introduce each of the different development mythologies. The remaining presentations focus upon prototyping and testing. These resources could be a useful resource...

Students investigate the generation of electricity by solar cells and how this can transform the lives of people without access to mains electricity.  The challenge is based on Practical Action's work in Gwanda, Zimbabwe.  

A crowd funding web site recently raised more than two million US dollars to fund solar roadways. These roads, claim the developers, will remain snow-free, and, at the click of a switch, can be transformed into car parks or even sports pitches. In this activity students consider whether solar roadways are worth...

This activity introduces children to simulations - modelling or acting out real-world, or maybe imaginary, situations. Linking to the teaching of space, it asks what factors need to be considered when simulating the solar system. Out of these, the children then decide what the most important things to include in...