I just did a presentation at my daughters 1st grade class. It was about
my career in computer science and technology. I brought the robot,
because lets face it, all performances are improved by props.
The kids were REALLY excited about it. Most questions were kiddish, of
course, but there were a few that showed real curiosity and innate
talent. One parent emailed and said her daughter was talking about
robots all night. One teacher asked why it said "Linux" on the side.
It occurred to me that one of the missions of BLU is advocacy. While
open source and free software won't have the resources of the likes of
Microsoft or Apple, it does have people that know how to do things.
Kids at school need to see that math is cool and that science is fun.
The problem, IMHO, is that math and science are taught from a maths or
science perspective which is kind of dry. If presented from an
engineering perspective, it could be made a lot more fun. And for those
purists out there, remember, we had steam locomotives before a full
understanding of thermodynamics.
I have a 21 year old who is a senior in college, and a 7 year old who is
in first grade. I'm not knocking teachers here, but there is a real need
to add substance to their lessons. Doing some cool things and bringing
them to the schools for the kids will help our communities.
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