First, some background. There are a few things I always am no matter where I am or what I'm doing. I'm a father, a husband and a teacher. I cannot turn any of these things off, nor do I want to. I have two daughters equally brilliant in their own way and a wife who shares the same passionate approach to life that I do.
So, today I spent time with my youngest daughter while the other two human occupants of the house were doing other things. Our interaction started off with a casual question about "playing" with the Lego robot. I have one of the SOAR EV3 robotics kits at the house so I can use it and understand it and then when it comes time to work with the SOAR kids, I know what I'm talking about. For the past week or so I've been fishing with comments to try and hook one of my kids into sitting down and building and programming it with me. Selfishly, I get to spend time with them; unselfishly, I get to incorporate schoolwork at home with family time.
Today I got a bite and Evelyn joined me. She's 8. There are a lot of things Evelyn is: beautiful, energetic, intelligent, deceitful, imaginative, musical . . . the list can go on and on. There's one thing she's not: a motivated student. Countless numbers of nights have gone by with arguments, tears, threats and pleading about homework and the value of education. I have to give credit to her teacher this year, she's done something with my child to make her excel. All the worries about her reading level and aversion to education have been lessened because of the wonderful things her teacher does. Not that any of her other teachers have done anything wrong, but something's clicking in school now. She's still reluctant, but I can see that she's learning.
So when we sat down today to play with the robot, I didn't have high expectations that she would stick around for very long. She loves Legos, but the EV3 doesn't really look a lot like your typical robot. I had built a tank version myself last weekend and didn't have time to program it. Evelyn sat down with me and we made a plan for what she wanted it to do. She drew a map, we numbered the different events we'd need to input and got started.
My jaw dropped as this attention deficit, squirming little girl performed trial after trial with the robot. At one point she was even inputting the new data into the computer. I was amazed at the combination of math (decimals and fractions), engineering (tracks didn't cut it, we switched to rubber wheels), science (she kept talking about friction) and art (music - you can select specific notes to play on the robot) she was using together. She collected data, changed it sometimes by tenth, to get the robot to do what she wanted. And then she shared it with everyone in the house.
It took us over an hour to get the programming done right. I interjected lessons where I could and explained to her what we were doing. She was coding at 8 years old. She was following the scientific method and focusing on what she was doing for longer than 10 seconds.
And then we spent another hour tearing it apart and started building a robotic arm.
Here's the point. Engagement. I took an unmotivated student and presented her with a way to learn and experiment. The technology we have available can be the bridge we sometimes need to engage students in their education. Google Glass may be one of those bridges. It still takes highly qualified people that can recognize and present our children with engaging activities to motivate them to learn.
I cannot thank her teacher enough for her contribution to Evelyn's success and I cannot stress to the rest of the educators in the world that there are engaging activities and lessons that we can use. It takes lots of work, planning and collaboration but it's well worth it.
STEAM - Science Technology Engineering Arts and Math http://www.steamedu.com/
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