As Joey Fortuna found out, it doesn’t
matter how educational a toy is if
kids don’t want to play with it.
“STEM toys” are meant to encourage children to develop their skills in the key
disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and
consumers see more of them every time they shop for their kids. As toys
marketed with the STEM buzzword proliferate, parents wonder whether they
really deliver on their promises. Can a toy that teaches coding really create a
computer genius? Can a robotics toy inspire a future scientist who will change
the world—or, at least, make a really good living? Or are STEM toys just
marketing hype? In talking to experts, we didn’t uncover any stats about the
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about the standards, rigor, and testing that go into creating them.
Fortuna is a programmer and the CTO of j2 Global (PCMag’s parent company),
and he’s given his two children, ages 8 and 10, multiple STEM toys over the
years. He’s observed that some toys with educational ambitions have simply
bored his kids. Take Modular Robotics Cubelets, which let you create robotics
projects using magnetically connectable cubes. “The idea is that you ... string
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that can move and detect obstacles or make sounds,” Fortuna says. “In reality,
the range of things you can do with it is so limited, the conceptual hurdle to get
to the point where you coax any sort of convincing or interesting behavior out of
it is so large, that they quickly lost interest.”
The Fortuna kids had the same reaction to Wonder Workshop’s coding and
robotics toys, Dash and Dot. The steps required to succeed were too numerous.
Also, creating a project typically involves failing several times and thinking of
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toys that worked best for his kids, Fortuna found, were the ones that had clear
directions and quick successes at the beginning to get them hooked.
(Opening image: Lego Boost Creative Toolbox)