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

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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?