I went to a magnet high school that was essentially a giant cram school. Killed any love I might have had for the material. If my technological education had been more hands-on as you advocate here, I might still be in the field.
One things about video games is that they displaced these scientific hobbies. When my dad was growing up, model rocketry, small engine mechanics, and whatever else could be tinkered with was the norm. Now, the past few generations have had ready made experiences—video games, social media, etc.—to pass the time rather than building something themselves. Today it requires parents to be very intentional to seek out that, so the work you’re doing is really excellent by giving parents some better tools
There’s a fairly fundamental educational engagement strategy here, apart from rote repetition from cram schools or gamification from screen-based learning engines: students find the practical application of knowledge far more interesting and involving than lecture or other “dry” learning. Kinesthetic learning - blending a hands-on experience building Tom’s battlebots or model rockets, with the engineering and applied skills necessary to do that correctly, gives the motivation, gratification, and real-world feedback necessary to do it correctly - and in many cases also a little competition with classmates or rivals from the other team to add a bit of spice.
Good stuff. Ramaswamy is a typical example of the downsides of the cram school approach. He never used his hard-earned technical skill to invent anything useful or expand the frontier of human knowledge. Rather, he used his knowledge and credentials to impress investors, and dissuade them from looking too closely at his business model. Henry Ford, who learned engineering by fixing farm equipment, would have despised him.
I went to a magnet high school that was essentially a giant cram school. Killed any love I might have had for the material. If my technological education had been more hands-on as you advocate here, I might still be in the field.
One things about video games is that they displaced these scientific hobbies. When my dad was growing up, model rocketry, small engine mechanics, and whatever else could be tinkered with was the norm. Now, the past few generations have had ready made experiences—video games, social media, etc.—to pass the time rather than building something themselves. Today it requires parents to be very intentional to seek out that, so the work you’re doing is really excellent by giving parents some better tools
There’s a fairly fundamental educational engagement strategy here, apart from rote repetition from cram schools or gamification from screen-based learning engines: students find the practical application of knowledge far more interesting and involving than lecture or other “dry” learning. Kinesthetic learning - blending a hands-on experience building Tom’s battlebots or model rockets, with the engineering and applied skills necessary to do that correctly, gives the motivation, gratification, and real-world feedback necessary to do it correctly - and in many cases also a little competition with classmates or rivals from the other team to add a bit of spice.
Good stuff. Ramaswamy is a typical example of the downsides of the cram school approach. He never used his hard-earned technical skill to invent anything useful or expand the frontier of human knowledge. Rather, he used his knowledge and credentials to impress investors, and dissuade them from looking too closely at his business model. Henry Ford, who learned engineering by fixing farm equipment, would have despised him.