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Interesting observation from

2012-12-02 17:56:05.818717+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

Interesting observation from yesterday's workshop: "I know they've stopped learning when they go all Star Wars".

[ related topics: Star Wars Space & Astronomy Education Aviation - Helicopters ]

comments in descending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2012-12-03 17:17:59.291193+00 by: Dan Lyke

dexev, yeah, I found it a fascinating insight that when they started applying narrative and mythology, the learning and curiosity about the real world had stopped.

meuon, a good portion of this workshop was about encouraging leaders to facilitate rather than teach. And one of the problems I have is in running that balance to keep the kids interested and not going off into Star Wars because I don't think I'm all that smart about mechanical engineering, but I am apparently way smarter than most adults about such things...

#Comment Re: made: 2012-12-03 15:57:57.075632+00 by: meuon [edit history]

I "judged" a recent "Lego Robotics" league event recently. I invented some new rules:

I was not a popular judge.. with the parental units.

I was blown away by how complex and yet ineffective some of the designs were. At the same time, a quite young girl and young boy had a minimal simplistic "2 drive wheels and a caster" design that used some superior thought processes to navigate and push/pull objects around.

What I liked watching was how some kids were willing to try various things, some seemingly ridiculous to a person like me, and make them work.

The highlight was: It was hosted at the training center for Volkswagen in Chattanooga and on the side lines (behind cages) were full size assembly line robots showing off some complex capabilities.

#Comment Re: made: 2012-12-02 23:38:48.102479+00 by: dexev

've noticed the same thing in my lego robots class -- sometimes, all they want to do is add more clones.