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?

What is Educational Entrepreneurship?

Kate Allison of First Focus
Demos the brain-wave copter!

How can small organizations create amazing learning environments?  That was the conversation Tech EdVentures had with Jim Connor of First Focus Learning Systems in Mountain View, CA.

First Focus is a very cool place.  They do things like teaching a whole year of reading skills in six months.  Or fast-tracking English language fluency for kids that are newly arrived to the US.  It's amazing stuff.  

Tech EdVentures and First Focus share some powerful core beliefs about how education should work.  For instance?

It's all about individual teaching.
Many schools are run for efficiency, teaching to the middle of the class or moving kids along at a pace which is manageable for 35 students at once.  We believe that the best learning experiences are custom-tailored to the needs of one student at at time.  Our vision puts kids at the center, and we individualize the learning experience for each and every student.

Exciting content motivates kids.
When kids engage in a hands-on activity, they are excited and motivated to work hard.  First Focus does this by incorporating some very neat high-tech toys which spark discussion, generate writing prompts and energize kids to achieve.  Similarly, Tech EdVentures builds every class session as a project-based learning experience, in which kids see, touch and interact with something that they built.  The result is excitement, motivation, curiosity and persistence in the face of challenges.  The results are incredible.

Kids need to move at their own pace.

Many kids who under-perform do so because their classes move too slowly!  By allowing kids to move on instead of waiting for the group, success builds upon success and kids maximize their learning.

One final idea is at the core of educational entrepreneurship:  

Small, nimble institutions will always teach better than large bureaucracies.  

I'll offer Tech EdVentures as an example.  Our most important focus is on the learning experience of individual students.  We update and modify our content and methods constantly.  And we are immediately responsive to the the feedback of our students.  

This kind of entrepreneurial approach to learning is the difference between good enough and best of class.  We applaud First Focus, and hope that others will join us in truly, boldly, teaching out of the box.

Allen

Tech EdVentures in Silicon Valley

Tech EdVentures is spending the next few days in Silicon Valley, meeting with friends who design web sites and create platforms for learning.  Before we share the details, two pictures will give you some "local flavor" of one of my favorite neighborhood in the Valley.

First stop was Whole Foods in Los Altos, where I went to grab some goji berries and fresh hummus.  Those of us with battery powered rides had an easier time parking!

Still on the high-tech-car theme, I finished lunch and pulled into traffic heading for Palo Alto.  Driving north I made my way past not one, not two but three of Google's funky self-driving cars.  It's a normal car until you get to the roof, which is decked out with laser sensors, cameras and satellite measurement gear.  Very, very cool. 

BOTH of these photos remind us of how fast the most basic technologies in our lives are adapting.  In this environment, Tech EdVentures believes it's essential for kids to have some critical skills for high tech success.  

These include the ability to collaborate, experience with problem solving and (of course) the tools to create computer code in order to automate work that would otherwise be tedious and repetitive.

Brave new world?  Here we come! 

Allen

Tech EdVentures Brings STEM Skills to School

So what did you do on your first day of class?

At Akiba Academy of Dallas, Sixth grade students took a break from their first day of school to wire circuit boards, power up low-voltage LED's and connect a PC-based integrated development environment to a microprocessor.  They'll be programming it in C++ starting next week, lead by staff from Tech EdVentures.

Did you say "first day of school?"

Our first day experience with the kids from Akiba confirms what national thought leaders are saying about STEM education.  Younger kids have tremendous aptitude and interest in technology.  The hands-on approach that we takes appeals to adolescents' natural curiosity. And once kids get their hands on a problem, they tune in to the finer points of math and science and are motivated to work hard.

Today's group of sixth grade boys and girls discussed the difference between anode and cathode leads as well as the physics that make LED's work in the first place.  Next week we'll bring resistors into the circuit, and students will start to adapt C++ sketches for the microprocessor that is illuminating their creations.

It's clearly going to be an exciting year for both Akiba and for Tech EdVentures.

Allen

Are we illiterate?

It's official.  Coding is now a literacy skill.  At least that's what the folks at Ed Week are suggesting.  They have highlighted resources from MIT that allow families to learn computer coding skills together.  The amazing thing to note is that important leaders in the Ed community have begun to see technology as a fundamental literacy, not just a "special," not an add-on and not an elective.  


It's a success skill that we need to give our kids.  Way to go, Ed Week.  

While our schools have not yet caught up, there are still places to learn tech and coding skills.  

Code.org is a great resource.  


My project, Tech EdVentures, is of course the local favorite!


Allen

Subtle Little Lessons

Last week, I was certain that the new Tech EdVentures web site was ready to launch.  I had worked for nearly six days non-stop drafting style sheets, tweaking graphic elements that my designer had created.  In preview mode, it looked awesome.  It looked invincible.  Even more importantly, it looked like I would finally be able to start advertising!  Think again.  

I opened the graphical page editor that Go Daddy provides.  I hit publish.  The site crashed.  I'll spare you the details, but five hours and three increasingly heated phone calls to tech support later, a sweet guy named George from Go Daddy set me straight.

"Sir, you looped around our graphic interface to write your own html, right?
"Yes, pretty impressive, huh?"
"Sir, you missed a single closing bracket on your main page.  That was enough to crash your entire site."
"Oh.  Um, oops."

OK--long story short--there are so many lessons to be learned from this.  About humility.  About knowing the limits of one's technical skills.  About treating tech support nicely.  Always!  I'll simply state the obvious.  Small things can be really powerful sometimes.  In this case, my entire educational program had ground to a halt because of a single missing keystroke.  I was impressed, for sure.

Allen