We spend a lot of time at the office here at Eduporium HQ, and we don’t get to spend as much time with children as we would like. When the Cambridge Montessori School invited us to bring some of our educational technologies for a workshop they were doing for the annual Hour of Code event, we could barely contain our glee. (Our Product Manager Fernando, in particular, couldn’t wait to be a kid again. Seriously, look at the above picture—can you tell the difference between the kid and the adult?)
We walked into the school building that rainy Wednesday with a few products in tow and a lot of ideas on how to explain them to the children and parents. As we were setting up the Makey Makey, a parent walked up and said, “Oh, cool—I got one of those for my daughter. I had no idea what it was, but she figured it out immediately and started working on a few projects!”
"That's wonderful!" we replied. Hopefully all the other kids are as receptive to this stuff as your daughter! Well, as it turns out, they were. Even at such young ages, the kids understood the basic concepts that we explained (conductivity, coding, circuitry) and began building prototypes. All we had to do was sit back and look very supportive. We left the school that day with big smiles and high-fives all around. As contrived as it sounds, there’s something magical about watching kids play, laugh, and learn at the same time. Fernando says it’s because kids remind us to be curious about things. That sounds about right.
Here are some more pictures from the workshop:
The Google Cardboard VR Kit was a huge hit, and a great demonstration of the concept of parallax.
Things got exciting when they figured out that human bodies were also electrically conductive.
The Makey Makey is great for testing conductivity in a fun way!