Adaptive Technologies: Where STEM and the Paralympics Meet

The 2012 Paralympic Games open in London on August 29. There, athletes with physical disabilities will have the opportunity to compete at elite levels. Medal Quest, a new online series from PBS, follows the stories of the American Paralympic athletes as they train for gold, and takes a close look at the specialized adaptive technologies that help them do so.
 
The Adaptive Technologies Special Collection on Teachers Domain brings together media  resources from MEDAL QUEST and the award-winning PBS series created to get kids excited about engineering and the design process, DESIGN SQUAD. Use these standards-based resources to help students explore how science, technology, engineering, and math support athletes with physical disabilities as they compete at elite levels.

Learn how you can use the resources in this collection to increase students’ understanding of people with disabilities, broaden awareness of Paralympic sports, highlight the adaptive technologies used by Paralympic athletes, and showcase the engineering design process used to create these technologies.