Extreme Succession Planning

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Extreme Succession Planning

• Teaching Children to Program
• Peter Hinrichsen
• www.clubengineer.org

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Topics

• Part 1
• Why call this presentationExtreme succession
  planning?
• Why teach children to program?
• How can an IT professional teach children to
  program?
• Part 2
• Programming the NXT

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Some background

• Show of hands who has school aged kids?
• We are all profoundly influenced by the education
  we receive
• The history of Club Engineer

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Why the Title Extreme Succession Planning?

• 20 years to retirement who will fill the places
  we leave vacant?
• Today we have a shortage of scientists
  engineers, it will be worse tomorrow
• My replacement will be about 5 years old today

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What is this 5 year old doing at school?

• The perfect students
• The ball chasers
• The entertainers
• The geeks the nerds

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What are the geeks and the nerds doing?

• Building (not playing) in the sand
• Working (not playing) with Lego
• Model railway wood work fully automating their
  sisters dolls house
• Messing about with electronics

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Building (not playing) in the sand
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Working (not playing) with Lego
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Jarrod at 14
When I was 14 I invented the scanner. I had a
pen based printer which used stepper motors to do
its work. I figured out how to control it from a
BASIC program. A while before that I had worked
out how to connect a light dependent resistor
from an electronics kit to the analogue joystick
port. I put the two together and took the tip of
a Pacer pencil and glued it to the LDR to narrow
its view. I mounted it and a torch bulb on the
print head, wrote a program that slowly scanned
horizontally and then scrolled the drum to scan
each line of a picture that was placed in the
paper feeder. The program read values from the
joystick port then displaying pixels that
corresponded to the lightness detected. It was
fairly crude - but it worked! I have no idea if
scanners existed prior to then but I did
come up with the idea on my own.
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On recruiting developers, Joel Spolsky says this
The good news about our field is that the really
great programmers often started programming when
they were 10 years old. And while everyone else
their age was running around playing soccer
(this is a game that many kids who cant program
computers play that involves kicking a spherical
object called a ball with their feet (I know,
it sounds weird)), they were in their dads home
office trying to get the Linux kernel to
compile.
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Summary Why Extreme Succession Planning

• We need more engineers scientists
• Great engineers scientists start their careers
  at age 5

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Topics

• Part 1
• Why call this presentationExtreme succession
  planning?
• Why teach children to program?
• How can an IT professional teach children to
  program?
• Part 2
• Programming the NXT

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Why teach childrento program?

• Its good for our society
• Its good for you, the teacher
• Its good for the children.

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1. Its good for our society

• Engineers are the innovators who create our
  wealth, and fix our problems. (Thomas Freedman,
  The World is Flat)
• It takes 20 years to create a great engineer,
  starting at age 5

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2. Its good for you,the teacher
In his book, Authentic Happiness, Martin
Seligman describes three types or levels of
happiness

• The Pleasant Life
• The Engaged Live
• The Meaningful Life

www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu
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The Pleasant Life
A pleasant life consists of having as much
pleasure as you can, as many of the positive
emotions, and learning some of the dozen or so
techniques that actually work for increasing the
duration and intensity of your pleasures. There
are shortcuts to the pleasures. You can go
shopping you can watch television you can eat
chocolate. These things do not lead to true
happiness.
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The Engaged Life
An engaged life is being one with the music,
being totally wrapped up in the people you love
or what you're doing. There are no shortcuts to
the engaged life. The engaged life can only be
had by first knowing what your highest strengths
are, your signature strengths, and re-crafting
your life to use them when ever possible.
PH Reminder Talk about flow
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The Meaningful Life
A meaningful life consists of again knowing what
your highest strengths and talents are and using
them in the service of something that you believe
is bigger than you are.
PH ReminderPositive emotion vsprofession
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3. Its good for the children
Steve Biddulph in his book Raising Boys points
out that primary education is dominated by women.
At my childrens school, there are 8 male
teachers in a staff of about 30. There are not
enough male role models, especially for the
non-sporty (geeky) kids school.
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Summary Why teach children to program?

• Its good for our society
• Its good for you, the teacher
• Its good for the children.

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Topics

• Part 1
• Why call this presentationExtreme succession
  planning?
• Why teach children to program?
• How can an IT professional teach children to
  program?
• Part 2
• Programming the NXT

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How to get into teaching children to program

• Do you have the personality of a natural teacher?
• Buy your first NXT kit
• Learn how to build program with NXT
• Sell the idea to your school obtain funding
• Recruit the first kids and start
• Run session
• Enter a competition
• Present to school assembly.

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1. Do you have the personality of a teacher?

• PHs Top 5 Signature Strengths
• Curiosity and interest in the world
• Gratitude
• Self-control and self-regulation
• Appreciation of beauty and excellence
• Bravery and valor
• PHs 25 Signature Strength
• Emotional intelligence

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2. Buy your first NXT kit
Retail kit 380
Educational kit 539
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3. Learn how to build program the NXT
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4. Sell the idea to your local school

• Not a difficult idea to sell
• You will be donating a large chunk of time
• The kids will benefit
• The school will be able to add Robotics Club to
  their marketing material.

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5. What the school needs to provide

• A staff member to beteam manager
• You will be the team coach
• Access to a room
• Access to computers
• Funding to buy the hardware

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6. Recruit your first kids
The kids in Club Engineer must think they are
special and elite.This is achieved by insisting
they audition to join by bringing something
they have built.
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7. Run the sessions

• Lesson plans are available atwww.clubengineer.org
  
• Week 1 - Hello World
• Week 2 - Controlling a motor
• Week 7 - Bounce around inside a square
• Week 10 - Follow a line

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8. Enter a competition
Robocup Junior
FIRST Lego League
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9. Present to school assembly
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End of part 1
Next, comes part 2 Programming the NXT