STEM Studies Put Kids Ahead of the Curve. For Life.

OK, a moment of full disclosure. I AM that teacher who waxes rhapsodic about his students, OK?  But I've got good reason...

Today I taught one of the most inspiring group of young kids I've come across since the launch of Tech EdVentures. They were all between the ages of 6-8 and attend a public school for grades K-2.  Students spent one hour with the Thymio II robot, learning about how its IR sensors work and taking their first pass at programming using ASEBA's visual programming interface.

Here is some of what we discussed in the course of one hour:

• Why infrared light is not visible to the eye.
• How IR sensors work by responding to reflected light.
• How cause and effect is just like the syntax of an "if/then" argument in coding.
• How poorly planned code can create infinite loops
• How negative numbers work.

Did I mention they were mostly in first grade?

All of this learning happened after school, at the end of the day. The kids were well behaved including (and especially) the child whose mom worried that her son was unfocused in school and might be disruptive. Not for a second.

It's clear that robotics (and other STEM studies) have the ability to accelerate early childhood learning. The reason it works is simple. Once children have a hands-on experience with something that occurs in the real world, they are intensely curious about what just happened. When they write code and direct the action, their curiosity is supplemented by a sense of pride and a deep ownership of the experience that is under their control.

As a result, my group of young learners felt free to dive into topics that the Common Core Standards place years ahead of their current grade.  Negative numbers? Sixth grade. Light frequency spectrum? Late Elementary to early Middle School. In a normal classroom, it makes sense to teach such abstract concepts only to older kids. But when you have a real machine using sensors to catch invisible light or changing motor speeds using code that contains positive and negative numbers, all of a sudden these advanced concepts are neither tricky nor abstract. They are self evident to the learners.

That is the main reason why Tech EdVentures promotes STEM studies from a young age. A tangible experience of technology, with hands-on and in real-time, helps expand a child's access to new concepts. It is clear that these children will have advantages over their peers that have the potential to dramatically raise their learning outcomes, not just now, but for the rest of their lives.

In the meantime, my students are still normal kids, just like yours. They laugh. They play games. And they talk about how micro-sensors work. Shouldn't all of our kids have this opportunity?

Allen Selis, Founding Director  
Tech EdVentures

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Tech EdVentures brings STEM skills to children in grades K-8.
We're committed to disrupting the world, one young learner at a time!

Whole Stole the Crayons in Silicon Valley?

FourSquare's Tristan Walker on race & Silicon Valley @NPR

On Tuesdays I go to Dallas' best tech networking event, hands down. We talk about difficult stuff like mergers, Bitcoin banks and trend-lines in the world of entrepreneurship.  

Today, we got up close with an even more difficult topic--who stole the multi-colored Crayons from the coloring book that is high tech?  Where are women in the workforce? African Americans? Latinos?  Forget about hide and seek. It's more like "King of the Hill." Some folks get to the top. Others get pushed away. Why?

There was a polite intensity in the room, and a real sense that we need to talk more about this.  Not as academics, not as politicians, but as the real people who create companies, hire staff and make actual decisions to either mentor or ignore talented up and comers.  The stats are pretty grim.  Three percent of Silicon Valley engineers are Latino and only two percent African American.  And women, over 70% of whom express interest in STEM during middle school...less then half of one percent study computer science.  Of all engineers, only 12% are women.

In the last few weeks, there has been a geyser of coverage about race in Tech.  From the American Society for Engineering Education, to Fast Company to NPR-Morning Edition's profile of Tristan Walker, the heat is on about race in the Valley.  The bottom line is that young talent gets into tech when people see role models from their own communities and when people reach out to mentor others.  No big initiatives, programs or grants will be as impactful as your contribution.  

The takeaway?  If you really believe in the values of tech and entrepreneurship, then start by disrupting what you see every day.  Upside for entrepreneurs?  More talent.  More human resources.  More intellectual and social capital under your roof or in your shop. Ready to be that change?

Allen Selis, Founding Director  
Tech EdVentures

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Tech EdVentures brings STEM skills to children in grades K-8.
We're committed to disrupting the world, one young inventor at a time!

Would Schools Please Stop Killing Creativity?

On my way to teaching a group of 7th graders today, I overheard the math teacher lecturing his/her kids.  Quote:

"Would you please stop running your own probability simulations on the calculators?  It messes up the settings and makes it harder to set up for my next class."

Friends, this is what's wrong with schools.  We're too task-centered, too worried about losing pace and not excited enough to let kids drive the action.  

Those of us who study schools believe that the power of schooling to shape attitudes is even greater than its ability to convey knowledge. The takeaway from this class was "don't think too much. Just follow directions!" I am a fan of traditional schooling when it's done well.  But done poorly, it's a mess.  Please, teachers, let your kids hack.  Let them invent. Let them guide the learning flow.  And by all means, jump for joy when they decide to run their own probability simulations on the TI Calcs, OK?  

Allen Selis, Founding Director  
Tech EdVentures

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Tech EdVentures brings STEM skills to children in grades K-8.
We're committed to disrupting the world, one young inventor at a time!

Missing the Point on STEM Shortages

Someone has to shoot down Hal Salzman’s recent opinion piece in US News, if just for the sake of good policy debate.  Here goes…

Under the headline “STEM Grads Are at a Loss,” Salzman argues that the United States is actually over training for STEM careers, and that graduates with PhD’s and engineering degrees increasingly face limited job prospects.  His figures show “ample supply (of workers), stagnant wages and, by industry accounts, thousands of applicants for any advertised job.”  

Salzman’s data (see Issues in Science and Technology) is valuable, but the conclusions are misleading.  Salzman takes sides in a debate about immigration policy regarding guest worker visas, which many tech companies rely upon to access a lower cost, international hiring pool.  Salzman’s claim is that the US provides enough skilled STEM employees, and should not dilute its workforce with expanded parameters for H-1B visas. 

Salzman’s conclusion on immigration might or might not be true, but his argument is overly aggressive and risks damage to American efforts to educate young engineers and scientists.  In my last post (WhyYour Child Needs A STEM Class In Elementary School) I argued that schools are not doing enough to train students for STEM careers, and that high-tech education should start as young as possible.  Like Second Grade!  

Based upon Salzman’s conclusions, educational leaders might rest contented that they are providing enough trained workers.  No need for additional programs, teacher training or materials.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

As the founder of Tech EdVentures, I’ve met front-line educators in dozens of Dallas area public schools that are well managed and superbly funded.  Most of the schools I’ve visited offer STEM education as an add-on, a club or a once-a-week elective.  Think of this as “a sprinkling of STEM” to season the main course of language arts, math and science.  But what if STEM should be the main course, the meat and potatoes of our children’s education?  We are rationing access to skills that have the potential to change lives and drive economic advancement.  We need to double our knowledge base several times over, not hold steady, as Salzman’s argument might imply.

The biggest problem of Salzman’s argument is his mindset about how individuals create value.  He assumes that large companies and public institutions are the engine that drives economic success.  Not so!  Our economic future is brightest when we cultivate a large cadre of inventors and entrepreneurs.  Design and programming skills help shape a mindset in which individuals are empowered to make disruptive changes.  The heart of STEM education is the belief that individuals and small teams have the power to re-shape their world.  And that is precisely why we need aggressive efforts to train young students to build, design, engineer and code.  These students won’t go off to private companies to seek work.  They will found their own startups.  And then they’ll hire others.

When all is said and done, Salzman’s addition to the policy debate is helpful.  But the take-away for educators is off key.  We still need engineering labs for second graders, and we need them yesterday.

Allen Selis, Founding Director
Tech EdVentures

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Cross posted from the Addison Treehouse blog.

The Treehouse is a new co-working space, geared towards 
startups and young companies.  Check them out...

STEM Studies: Elementary Schools Need Engineering Labs

If your daughter's second grade did not have a reading curriculum or a math program, odds are you would be out the door tomorrow.  You would say, "Hey, reading and math are survival skills.  My daughter won't be very successful or happy unless she can read great books, write expressively and solve the kind of quantitative problems she'll encounter in daily life.  I would be crazy to send her on the journey to adulthood unskilled and unprepared."  You'd be right.

What if her school had all of the above, but didn’t teach coding, engineering and robotics in second grade. Would you still be satisfied? Let’s hope you answered “No” to that question, too. You should expect to see your second grader writing code, building machines and developing prototypes. If not, then it’s time to look for a new school.

Here are four reasons why.

1: IT is the new plumbing

The degree to which information technology has become embedded in our professional lives is at the level of saturation. When I ran a school, we would not hire receptionists unless they could update the web site and upload CSV files to Mail Chimp. In the world of trades, it’s impossible to gain better than unskilled labor unless you can work with data and diagnostics. Plumbers don’t show up at your door today without scanners and ROV’s sporting video cameras. If you want to be a part of the working world today, you need to know how to use complex machines. End of story.

2: STEM skills are empowering

Societies are funny things. They allocate status, power and privilege in fascinating ways. Once upon a time, poets and theologians made decisions that shaped the destiny of whole societies. Today that entrée is increasingly reserved for people who know how to analyze, build, design and create. Adults who lack these skills will increasingly be the un-empowered whose voices are not heard and who do not get to make their mark upon the world. While we have yet to see our first “startup President”, just wait. It’s coming.

3: Your child should be a developer, not a consumer

The economic world is about to break down between two different categories of actors. Consumers and developers. We are currently awash in a market full of devices that don’t require much expertise for consumers to use. That’s on purpose. The simpler it is to use an app, the easier it will be to sell, monetize, market and data-mine its users. But there is a clear power-differential to this equation. Simple consumers are giving up valuable information, content and hard cash. The developers are the ones who benefit. Which one do you want your child to be?

4: Teach your child to make things. Not buy them.

As part of my business, I teach nine year olds how to code. During our first class session, I point out the golden rule of things. It goes like this: “Whatever you own, if it came from a store, then someone designed it and manufactured it. If you don’t like the way it works, then get out there and reprogram it, hack it or just make your own.” The kids nod their heads and say, “sure, no problem.” That single lesson could be a life-changer if it succeeds in shifting basic attitudes about the economics of need and consumption. And that is the most important reason why your second grader should have an engineering lab in her school. What we learn at the age of eight or nine goes beyond skills. We learn attitudes, mindsets, habits of work and patterns of thinking. When we teach kids to make things themselves, not buy them, we empower them to assume responsibility for the shape of their world.

Now that is a kid whom I would like to see in the oval office one day. One who reads poetry AND has an engineering degree.

Allen Selis, Founding Director
Tech EdVentures - Robotics and Coding for Kids

Support Tech EdVentures by like-ing our FB page.

Cross posted from the Addison Treehouse blog.

Thanks, Paula, for inviting me to write this post!

The Treehouse is a new co-working space, geared towards startups and young companies.  Check them out...

The Rising Tide of Tech Education for Kids

The last leg of our travels home to Dallas took the Tech EdVentures road trip to Los Angeles, where I visited an amazing company named U-Code.  
Here is their story.

Scott Mueller, U-Code's founder, is blessed with a very sharp son who was looking for a bigger mental challenge than school work provided.  Scott began teaching coding to his son and immediately realized easy it was for kids to learn coding skills...and how that experience was transformative for his son's learning.  Scott, himself a good entrepreneur, took off with the idea.  A store-front computer learning center followed.  Then another.  And another.  Scott knew that he was on to something big, and kept going.

When I visited Scott's learning center in Hermosa Beach, it was packed with nearly two dozen kids in the midst of creating Minecraft universes.  The kids shifted easily from the graphics of their games to the root code of their creations.  Some kids called out questions, and Scott's kid-savvy tech staff jumped in seamlessly to help students over any difficult spots.

In the waiting area outside of the programming mosh-pit, I met the mother of one student.  Her child is on the Autism spectrum and had, in her words, a miserable time in school.  The she found U-Code.  According to this mom, a chance to learn coding gave her son an incredible boost of self confidence.  Not only did he make great strides in computer programming, but he also turned to his other schoolwork with a better attitude, greater persistence in the face of challenges and a more resilient sense of himself as a successful learner.  Scott and I keep hearing these stories as we teach kids.

As Tech EdVentures and U-Code both grow, the question that we all should be asking ourselves is this:  At what point do schools become irrelevant?  At what point do small, nimble entrepreneurs add greater value to our children's future than larger educational systems?  

This is what small, focused learning spaces can do for kids.  And it's why this venue for education is destined to grow steadily over the next several decades.

Allen Selis, Founding Director
Tech EdVentures - Robotics and Coding for Kids

Tech EdVentures is blogging from the road as part of our recent visit to Silicon Valley. All that effort, just to bring cool content to you.  We know you're grateful...
You can thank us by like-ing our FB page, OK?

Programming Just for Kids

Sharon Marzouk, Founder of Techy Kids

I have to start this post with a public statement:  Sharon, you were right.

Sharon who?

Meet Sharon Marzouk, whom I have dubbed the Duchess of Thymio.  (JK...Sharon is more of a mentor to me, and one I'm grateful to have.)

Sharon is the founder of Techy Kids, a Menlo Park based company that creates amazing lesson plans for kids to design, collaborate, code and present their inventions just like adult startup leaders do. Sharon is also the person who convinced me (and Tech EdVentures!) to make Thymio II the foundation of our early-elementary coding program.

There are two reasons.
First, the Thymio II is a great robot which comes equipped with sensors, speakers, a microphone and even an accelerometer.  It's a tremendous collection of technology that is presented in a friendly, well constructed package that appeals to kids.

Kids drag and drop icons...while the code auto-populates!

Second, Thymio uses a little-known platform called ASEBA.  Kids as young as Kindergarten age can program Thymio by moving drag and drop icons within a friendly user interface.  At the same time, ASEBA's interface is writing actual computer code.  Kids quickly see that for every icon they manipulate that have written a new line of code.  This makes it easy for kids to scaffold up to their next level of skills by typing precise directions with a keyboard.  ASEBA's combination of a simple interface and a sophisticated program environment sets Thymio head and shoulders above many 'bots including Legos Mindstorms, and helps kids learn to code sooner than they would otherwise.

That, in the end, is the shared mission of Techy Kids and Tech EdVentures.  We want to see young kids develop sophisticated skills so that they can take their place as leaders, inventors and entrepreneurs.   Just like Sharon! 

Allen Selis, 
Founding Director
Tech EdVentures

Tech EdVentures is blogging from the road as part of our recent visit to Silicon Valley. All that effort, just to bring cool content to you.  You can thank us by like-ing our FB page, OK?