Cubes around the nation were invited to attend a meeting held by the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House during Computer Science Education Week.
As part of a group of around 20 people, including educators, game designers, programmers and a neuroscientist, we participated in a small think tank session.
Collectively, I’d say we were a group of forward thinking folks who are doing their part to increase accessibility of STEM (Science, Technology, Education, and Math), STEAM (A for Art) or STREAM (R for Reading) into the mainstream educational practice of schooling in the United States.
While many of us in our day-to-day lives don’t think there is a dearth of engineers and scientists in the world, the numbers are staggering when you look at the drop in science and engineering interest in our classrooms.
Intific – a part of Cubic Global Defense that develops software and game-based solutions in modeling and simulation, training and education, cyber warfare and neuroscience – is no stranger to this problem.
Our education division has worked on exciting projects like teaching physics to kindergarten kids, computer programming and robotics to middle school girls, and medical/first responder skills to high school level students.
All of these projects were funded by the U.S. Government, in attempts to help close this gap.
At the White House meeting, we really put a lot of emphasis on utilizing games to pushcomputer science learning in the classroom, and we had some fantastic conversations about how to approach making computer science education more inclusive and accessible.
One of the key common themes discussed repeatedly was on ways to drive interest and engagement for the sciences through innovative game design.
This included finding ways to make failure not seem like a bad thing, for as any scientist knows, failure is just a normal part of the learning process!
If I put on my nerd glasses real quick and think of failure as a probability P(F) >.5 with F being failing at some point during the learning process (getting an equation wrong, incorrectly building something, miscalculating a yield, etc.); what we really want to see is an intersection between getting things wrong and having fun while doing it: P(F∩E), and reach a much higher level (with E representing entertainment). If so, we can eventually reach a point of P(L|(F∩E) )=1 with L being learning.
In other words, let kids explore and fail like any good scientist does with scientific method, but don’t stigmatize it; make it fun, keep engagement high and eliminate the fear factor of tackling difficult subjects. /end nerd rant…
Megan Smith, the United States Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, was able to stop by for a quick visit.
She relayed the President’s interest in this topic; discussing how the “no child left behind” concept continues to evolve into newer, more practical and better practiced policies and initiatives.
We ran out of time way too quickly, exchanged information and vowed to see if we can capitalize on the energy created during this meeting.
It was a great opportunity to represent Intific and Cubic Global Defense – to show that defense doesn’t always mean weapons and widgets, and that software isn’t always algorithms and simulation systems.
We're attempting to do our part to shift education forward in innovative and exciting ways.
Being able to take part in something like this puts into perspective that our educational efforts have purpose, and most importantly, reminds me there is an audience that is in desperate need of some of the cutting-edge research and development we do.
With fast progress in fields like bioengineering, NanoEngineering, and Neuroscience these STEM disciplines will become part of Cubic’s culture as we stay innovative to enable a safer world.