KidStarter Campaign

Hey gang! I just popped by to let you know about a cool Indiegogo campaign I have come across called KidStarter. This is something I wish they had when I was a kid because quite frankly, I have always been interested in creating things but just never knew how to go about doing things. In the KidStarter movement however, you teach kids by giving them DIY projects like creating a watch or a robot, you get them interested in Technology and Science and Math by giving them hands on lessons that are cool.

This seems to be a part of the whole Maker movement which is something I have been watching because it appeals to the geeky side of me. I like the idea of being able to look at something like a robot but instead of just studying it in a book and saying “OK that’s how it’s done” to instead get the parts needed to make the robot and then program it to do what you want. Thats seems to be a lot of what this campaign is about but don’t let me hog the spotlight lets get the information straight from the source!

Looking at the video makes me wonder where I might have gone had such an environment been available when I was a child. I remember when my mothers vacuum or sewing machine or toaster broke I would take it out back with a hammer and a screw driver and I took it apart. I wanted to see how it worked to try and understand it. Of course though, as a kid I didn’t know what all those gears or pulleys or whatnot did but imagine if I had a teacher there with me to explain it all to me. Imagine what could have happened if I had a science teacher there to explain to me just what the parts in the vacuum did and how they did them. Instead of me making a cobbled together ghostbusters outfit from spare parts I might have been able to fix those things. I might have taken that knowledge on and found myself figuring out how to make those things even better.

I may have found myself today as an inventor instead of a writer, I may have had patents under my belt now instead of blogs and writing credits. I know I used to love finding out how things worked but I also know by the time I got to college I fought with my teacher about why a computer hardware class should be taught to those only going for programming. As a child, I would have thought taking computers apart and making them work again would be awesome but as an adult when the teacher questioned what I would do if my computer broke I said I would call the IT department. Somewhere along the line my love of science and what it can do was dulled. I don’t want this to happen to my son!

The maker movement has started people looking at doing things on their own, remembering how things are done and in some ways I have been experiencing that this year.  This year we have started making soap at home and I have to admit it is so much fun. It is also learning chemistry and will be a great thing to teach my son one day when he starts to learn the sciences. This is the type of thing that KidStarter seems to want to do, to give children the ability to take things apart and then help them learn why it works. They want to let kids do the science, do the math and do the tech based learning in a way that is fun. When you get to do something yourself and see a finished working project it truly does make you say “What else can I do with this?” This project can help teach our kids without killing their sense of wonder and accomplishment like a lot of traditional schooling does.

I for one hope this campaign gets off the ground with more funding than what they need. I think that this campaign is something that is needed and I want my son to be able to participate in something like this when he is old enough! So please if any of this has struck a chord with you help out this Indigogo campaign! You can find it by clicking this link—> http://bst.is/E0QMW8