It is inspiring as a teacher to run into former students who were inspired by computer science and now are in the business. Please meet:
Fatima – Houston ISD Piney Point ES now Revere MS Student – at EYH
Victor is a leader. The book “World Class Learners – Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students” leads me to think that our education system requiring teachers and students to be followers is killing that spirit. Those who lead tend to get in trouble.
I think we should eliminate multiple choice testing in elementary school and replace it with Tests of Creative Thinking. As others have found, I observed in my 4 years as an ES teachers that testing of young children must stop.
Fatima is one of my learners that was in my daughter’s presentation at the Expanding Your Horizons Conference. I wonder what I can do to help her become one of our future leaders and entrepreneurs.
Research shows that “high school students who exhibit creative personalities are more like to drop out of school than other students.” We as a society must do something to build the creative spirit of our children though hands-on projects and free thinking time in schools. Buckyballs are Everywhere. We need learners like Stephen Hawking who made no excuses and overcame his difficulties. I have been saying for decades that computer science opens the doors for creative thinking. So, when is action going to be taken on making computer science and engineering a required academic area. Even the President agrees.
More videos on this can be found at code.org. So decades after I produced a video on this very thing, seems people are finally finding it important. Want to see programming in action, please see my Programming with Graphics Video. And this is just the short version.