My 7 Year Old Son Found His People at the Maker Faire | Hacker News Reader

My 7 Year Old Son Found His People at the Maker Faire

jackcwest.wordpress.com

147 pointsjackwest34 comments

"... walked the half mile to the San Mateo County fairgrounds to join thousands of others where I discovered that my son was probably adopted"

Nope, you were probably like that when you were a kid. Unfortunately, the "look, but don't touch" mentality has been thought relentlessly to children for the past N years. In some cultures kids, after a certain age, say, 10, are supposed to be totally focused on studying so that they get to a good school, so none of that tinkering stuff. Unless, of course you wanted to belong with the grimy, poor souls who had to work with their hands, e.g. the young boys who were taken out of school and given as an apprentice (my mom made an argument similar to this when I was studying for the middle school entrance exams, when I was 11.)

I am inspired to return more of the wonder of learning to my science classes. Coincidentally for me, this is happening with blended learning. More time is liberated for experiments and student operated demonstrations when I let Sal Khan do some of the teaching for me.

I would take studying in quotes: "studying" Because they do not actually earn any useful or marketable skills during those almost ten years. My wife told me this is called academism.

Some do. The smart ones learn to read and then sit at the side of the class reading - ignoring the "education" that is going on around them.

This is in class; but there is a huge pressure on them to "study" after class, spending all time on it.

They because myopic, weaker from vitamin D deficiency and still do not learn anything (adult would consider) useful.

I still don't understand how the typical adult can talk about work / life balance with a straight face with what we do to children.

Many adults do long hours of rather unproductive work so it's the natural state of life for them.

There may be some pressure for this, but in most high schools in America it simply isn't needed. You can get A's and B's mostly by showing up if you are reasonably intelligent. Even getting all A's wasn't that difficult.

First, USA is by large not the most "studying" culture. Second, the goal is not so much A's and B's in school as entering the high education.

but getting into college isn't hard either. Unless you are shooting for Harvard it's just not. They are businesses that like to make money. They want to take your money.

Too many people aiming for Harvard leads to:

- Students trying to jump over their own heads

- They not getting in anyway and feeling like losers for the rest of their lives

- Actual Havard alumnis feeling wrongfully entitled

Bad, bad, bad, but that's where society aims.

Direct link: http://jackcwest.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/last-saturday-my-s...

As a parent I cannot express how profoundly useful it can be for your child to find their 'people' at this age. Some people don't find their cultural match until college or even later.

And as I have told my kids, find one other member of your 'tribe' and you can find the rest, since finding someone who knows others like them is more common than discovering people who have yet to identify their common interests. I was lucky in that I discovered the 'hacker/makers/tweaker' community when I joined the Amateur Radio club in High School.

That is one of the greatest things about the internet: it makes finding your tribe pretty trivial, no matter your location or circumstances. Even if you grow up in the middle of nowhere in a homogenous social context, you can find a culture that intrigues you, learn about it from afar and then you have a direction in life when you leave home.

Of course it makes it easy to then isolate yourself inside that tribe as well.

I am still looking for my people, but I sure like visiting your people. They are a lot of fun.

A good story, and the best closing line ever:

"Mommy, I'm not that weird."

I found the story interesting, but it was this single line that made it for me.

I agree. That should have been the title of the article.

I feel for the "look but don't touch" part. I did the same thing to my son, but in my defense, he's 4 and wasn't quite as into how things worked. He was more interested in anything that was his favorite color (red).

What I did learn about him though was that he has good geek potential, and that he could be entertained for about 2 hours there.

I can't wait to take him back next year.

One of the aspects of living in the Bay Area that I enjoyed most was the feeling of not being the only geek in the room, or not even being the geekiest person in the room.

Never been to a Maker Faire yet, but I used to particularly enjoy the Psychotronix Film Festival that way: http://www.kfjc.org/promotions/psychotronix/index.php

Love it! I still have a 16mm projector in my lab store room.

The wonder of childhood curiosity. Fantastic!

I wish we had something like this in Germany.

Lots of photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/makerfaire/

Why wish? We didn't have one here until a few years ago. If there's anything you're allowed to do yourself, it's a celebration of do-it-yourself.

Where are you based? I'm from Frankfurt, maybe we could organize something.

Up in Bremen.

I was in SF for work last week and was delighted to see the Maker Faire was in town. Was a great way to kill a Sunday afternoon. About half the place was awesome activities for kids, and the other half was awesome demos/products for adults.

The first thing I thought to myself when getting inside was "this would be an awesome place to bring my kids (when I have some)"

And a great place to bring out the kid in yourself - for me, the one that I regularly have to be reminded not to tell to be quiet.

Time to take Cody to a hackerspace.

Get that kid an arduino, some welding classes, and a set of basic tools.

ASAP.

My six year old son and I attended the maker faire. It was nonstop fascination and engagement for both of us all day. He loved the Lego Jeep, building squishy circuits with play-doh, 10mm LEDs and DC motors, building switches with aluminum, foam core, and alligator clips. When he asked, "Dad, can we build circuits and a robot too?" I got a huge smile on my face and felt really great.

The Arduino controlled fire breathing machines scared the hell out of him and he wouldn't go anywhere near them no matter how much I tried to convince him that they were safe (you could feel a heat blast from them and they were loud).

We watched the future engineers of America compete with their TETRIX robots, moving bowling balls and picking up racquet balls.

Overall the Maker Faire gave me confidence that in the U.S. there are still a lot of smart inventors shaping the future. Not everyone is tapped out watching "American Idle" blaming red states and blue states.

3D printers were everywhere and fun to watch. I have no use for one, but suddenly I want to build one. Luckily the price tags north of $1500 brought me back to reality.

We bought a few inexpensive electronic projects that we look forward to building and plan on attending both days next year. It was crowded, but the people running the booths were so nice and knowledgable, there was so much there to spark the imagination that it was worth it.

You can make your own hobbyist 3D printer/CNC mill for around ~$300-600. I'm considering one, but I'm a bit stuck on what I'll use it for.

https://www.inventables.com/technologies/cnc-mill-kits-shape...

Oh man. We were only there for about three hours. So I missed a lot of that. Next year I'll have to get the full weekend ticket.

You can do one better and submit a project with your son. Non-commercial projects that are accepted get in for free. (I'm a grown up and I can't tell you how proud it made me feel to present this year) :)

Great story. Thanks for sharing.

I can't wait until my daughter (who is 4) is a bit older. I already have a host of things for us to do. She already owns a WoWee robot, and sees me code every day. I got her a broken laptop so she can sit besides me and "code". Soon...

Love it! There are some great web resources now for young coders in case you weren't already aware. Check out codeacademy, mykidcancode, and of course - scratch. In fact, I think Google has their own block programming initiative that they were showing at the maker faire.

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