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I'm always extremely disappointed by the marketing of extremely expensive engineering kits and robots towards education. Most of the practical learning to be h

I'm always extremely disappointed by the marketing of extremely expensive engineering kits and robots towards education. Most of the practical learning to be had is in figuring out how to make the thing work. The kits become little more than elaborate toys with a few extra steps added to make the student feel like they did something. However, all they did was follow instructions. For at least 90% of what engineers do on a regular basis, following carefully tested instructions is not one of them.

moron4hire 7y ago
There is a significant issue of retention for students. You typically want a "training-wheels" sort of experience to capture the student's imagination early on. Will it be the last tech they ever but? Obviously not. But having options other than "build stuff from scratch" is super important to growing interest in any particular industry. Written by a guy who experienced a hell of a lot of criticism 20 years ago for writing games in JavaScript and now is the lead VR product engineer for a company.
whywhywhywhy 7y ago
"what we were seeing was the "hacker phenomenon," that, for any given pursuit, a particular 5% of the population will jump into it naturally, while the 80% or so who can learn it in time do not find it at all natural." [0] What you're describing is something that comes naturally to you and almost every person on this website. Kids who think that way will likely end up in engineering of some sort regardless. The rest need this sort of guided approach to even show them that they could even possibly do this sort of thing and it helps move that percentage up. Although, that being said I don't really think much to the Pi-Top 4 at all. You'd definitely have a more valuable empowering experience holding an actual board and plugging wires directly into it, the end result would be the same and I feel they smoothed out the wrong part of the experience. [0] http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/#smalltalkAndChildren http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/#smalltalkAndC...

moron4hire 7y ago

There is a significant issue of retention for students. You typically want a "training-wheels" sort of experience to capture the student's imagination early on. Will it be the last tech they ever but? Obviously not. But having options other than "build stuff from scratch" is super important to growing interest in any particular industry. Written by a guy who experienced a hell of a lot of criticism 20 years ago for writing games in JavaScript and now is the lead VR product engineer for a company.

whywhywhywhy 7y ago

"what we were seeing was the "hacker phenomenon," that, for any given pursuit, a particular 5% of the population will jump into it naturally, while the 80% or so who can learn it in time do not find it at all natural." [0] What you're describing is something that comes naturally to you and almost every person on this website. Kids who think that way will likely end up in engineering of some sort regardless. The rest need this sort of guided approach to even show them that they could even possibly do this sort of thing and it helps move that percentage up. Although, that being said I don't really think much to the Pi-Top 4 at all. You'd definitely have a more valuable empowering experience holding an actual board and plugging wires directly into it, the end result would be the same and I feel they smoothed out the wrong part of the experience. [0] http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/#smalltalkAndChildren http://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/#smalltalkAndC...