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

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