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Teaching Kids Engineering By Building Cartoon Tech (hackaday.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the the-family-that-builds-together dept.

szczys writes: If you're struggling to get your kids interested in electronics or other types of engineering, this is the way. Start young and focus on something they're already fascinated with. The two brothers in this article are really into the PBS cartoon Wild Kratts. There's a handheld communications device called a Creaturepod on the show. With the help of mom and dad the family built a working version of the fictional hardware. Of course having Joe Grand, a well-known professional computer engineer, as the patriarch was key in this story. But the roadmap is there for this to be replicated.

11 of 33 comments (clear)

  1. A good way to get kids interested in tech by Chrisq · · Score: 2

    A good way to get kids interested in tech and building

    1. Re:A good way to get kids interested in tech by Z00L00K · · Score: 2

      Cartoon tech - Wile E. Coyote.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re:A good way to get kids interested in tech by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Cartoons? As much as I liked them, I didn't like them more than the Discovery channel or History channel. Before they started to suck.

    3. Re:A good way to get kids interested in tech by krept · · Score: 1

      Ok... and now that they do suck?

      --
      None of us know everything. Therefore we're all naïve.
    4. Re:A good way to get kids interested in tech by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      Not likely. At any time, at any place, when people don't have to subsistence farm for a living, they don't. There's a reason for that: subsistence farming is back-breaking, monotonous toil that most people will do almost anything to escape.

  2. Re:Why did she censor the kids' faces? by Chrisq · · Score: 1

    Replacing their heads with a skull? This is weird. If they didn't agree to be photographed they shouldn't have been photographed at all.

    Maybe she was following the advice of the german police.

  3. Give them time by bkr1_2k · · Score: 2

    Or just let them be kids and give them exposure to a lot of things and let them decide what they're interested in instead of trying to force them down a particular path. There are plenty of avenues of success (both emotional and financial) that don't involve engineering or electronics.

    --
    "Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
    1. Re:Give them time by Poingggg · · Score: 1

      Or just let them be kids and give them exposure to a lot of things and let them decide what they're interested in instead of trying to force them down a particular path. There are plenty of avenues of success (both emotional and financial) that don't involve engineering or electronics.

      Apparently you haven't (in good /. tradition) rtfa. The kids loved working on it and were interested in electronics. Both learned a lot of this project, had lots of fun and now know that thinking up something is not the same as instantly making it, and that for making it one has to make choices of what it can, and can't do.
      All very useful in real life and none of it 'forced down' to them.

      --
      What person will donate an airborne act of love?
    2. Re:Give them time by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 2

      Somebody did not read the preamble:

      "If you're struggling to get your kids interested in electronics or other types of engineering, this is the way. "

      Notice the bit about "struggling to get your kids interested"...

  4. Family fun - kudos to the parents by tomhath · · Score: 1

    This sounds like great family time together. Kids working with their parents on any project, be it gardening, making same kind of art work, working on the car, whatever, is how children should spend a lot of their time. Far better than plopping them in front of a TV or game console.

  5. Re:Remember the erection set? by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 1

    Erection... big nuts... shaft size... what?