Download The New Cool: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts AudioBook Free
That Monday afternoon, in high-school gyms across America, kids were fighting for the only real glory American culture appears to want to dispense to the young these days: sports glory. But at Dos Pueblos SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL in Goleta, California, in a gear-cluttered classroom, a different type of "cool" was brewing. A physics instructor with a dream - the first public high-school teacher ever to get a MacArthur Genius Award -- had round up a group of high-I.Q. students who wished to put their specialized know-how to work. In the event that you asked these brainiacs the actual stakes were that first week with their task, they'd have informed you it was all about earning a robotics competition - building the ultimate automatic robot and prevailing in a machine-to-machine competition in front of 25,000 screaming enthusiasts at Atlanta's Georgia Dome. But for their coach, Amir Abo-Shaeer, much more hung in the balance. The fact was, Amir acquired in mind an alternative vision for education, one structured not on rote learning -- on absorbing facts and information -- but on lively creation. In his mind, he saw a far more strong academy within Dos Pueblos that would make science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) cool again, and he understood he was poised on the border of earning that dream possible. All he needed to get the necessary financing was one flashy get - a triumph that would tightly put his Engineering Academy at Dos Pueblos on the map. He thought that 1 day there will be a nation filled up with such academies, and a new popular veneration for STEM - a "new cool" - that would come back America to its past innovative glory. It had been a dream shared by Dean Kamen, a modern-day inventing wizard - often-called "the Edison of his time" - who'd concocted the very same FIRST Robotics Competition that acquired lured the kids at Dos Pueblos. Kamen acquired created FIRST (For Motivation and Popularity of Knowledge and Technology) practically two decades prior. And today, with a participant alumni base getting close a million strong, he experienced that recognition was about to strike critical mass. In The New Cool, Neal Bascomb manages to make even those who know little about - or are vaguely suspicious of - technology care and attention passionately about a team of kids questing after a different kind of glory. In these kids' heartaches and head pain - and yes, high-five triumphs -- we glimpse the path not just to a new way of educating our youngsters but of honoring the key skills a population needs to prosper. A fresh cool.
