The company sees variety as important in its lesson
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one end are small models, which can be knocked out in
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well and give kids a sense of accomplishment. At the
other end are giant team builds. These larger, more
structured projects avoid the situation in which some
kids are building and others are only looking on—
everyone plays a role. And because not every teacher is
a science whiz, Lego keeps lesson plans easy. Getting
tech into the classroom shouldn’t be a chore.
SMALL COMPANIES WITH A BIG FOOTPRINT
While larger companies such as Mattel and Lego can
put resources into testing, smaller companies have to
work by informed intuition. Take Cubelets (one of the
toys that didn’t engage Joey Fortuna’s children): They
were developed as part of CEO Eric Schweikardt’s
Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. dissertation, which looked at
creating software models with 3D parts. The initial idea
wasn’t to create a toy, but it led to Cubelets. This is a
premium-priced toy—introductory home sets go for
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and is largely used in the classroom. According to
company marketing manager Stu Barwick, classes in all
50 states and several countries use Cubelets.
Before teachers can teach kids how to use Cubelets, they
need to learn themselves, which is why the company
created a variety of training programs and online
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helps parents create robotics challenges for their kids.
What Cubelets doesn’t have is any testing behind it.
Teachers recommend it by word-of-mouth because they
see students begin to understand engineering and
robotics, but there are no numbers to back up its
success yet.
Teachers
recommend it
by word-of-
mouth because
they see
students begin
to understand
engineering
and robotics.