Education, limited resources, talented kids… and robots.

There was a story published in Wired magazine in 2005 which I remembered recently during one of our planning sessions for our workshops at Miller Technology High in Liverpool. It’s a story about some high-school students in Phoenix, Arizona who enter a robotics competition. Here’s the link:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html

What I really like about the story is that the kids involved learn new skills and knowledge in a self-directed way. They engage in a process of imagination, exploration and trial-and-error. They test original ideas and all of their learning is owned by them. It’s a pedagogy that we are trying to create in our own workshops but in a slightly different context, for our work it’s about creative expression, multimedia and kids sharing their own stories. There is an update to the the story about La Vida Robot here:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/16-05/st_15vidarobot

A photo of the team from Wired (from left): teacher Allan Cameron, Lorenzo Santillan, Oscar Vazquez, Cristian Arcega, Luis Aranda, and teacher Fredi Lajvardi.