Smithsonian Education News

	Cast Your Vote! Smithsonian and ePals Honor Kid Inventors Day January 17 is Kid Inventors' Day and the Smithsonian and ePals are marking the occasion by opening up voting for the "people's choice" winners of the second annual Invent It! Challenge. In almost 300 entries, Pre-K-12 students from around the globe have submitted ideas for inventions to solve real-world problems. Help boost this STEM activity by weighing in before February 4 with your picks for the best student inventions. Voting happens here
	Share with Your Students Seriously Amazing A new website, "Seriously Amazing," poses some intriguing questions. "When is being blue in the face a good thing?" "Where can you find the funkiest spaceship in the galaxy?" "Was Dr. Seuss a wartime propagandist?" The answers can all be found—as your students will find out—in the Smithsonian's vast collections. Take a look
	Online Conferences Civil Rights Series Join Smithsonian curators and educators for two free online Q&A sessions: "From Lincoln to Today," a survey of African American civil rights movements (February 13, for students and educators) and "A Will of Their Own," an educators' session on eighteenth-century women's rights leaders and what they can tell us about our own times (March 13). Your students can also complete "Smithsonian Quests" based on the conferences and earn digital badges. Learn about these online opportunities

	Teacher Training in Washington, D.C. Learning Through Objects: Museums and Young Children The Smithsonian Early Enrichment Center offers a two-day training program for early-childhood educators (March 14-15). Learn more		Online Conference Oh Freedom! Teaching Civil Rights through Smithsonian Collections Join curators, experts, and educators for live presentations, demonstrations, and moderated forums, February 6. Free registration
	Online Fun Myth in Word and Pictures In two new tablet-ready interactives, students go deep inside Smithsonian artworks based on classical mythology. Try them out		Online Panel Discussion National Youth Summit on Abolition To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History hosts a discussion of the American abolition movement in light of modern-day slavery and human trafficking (February 11). Free registration