(2006-11-03) Sierra Educating Kids Science

Kathy Sierra on the trouble we have Educating Kids, especially in Exposing Young Kids To Science. If you studied math, science, or engineering (STEM) at a four-year college (College Education) in the US, much of what you learned is useless, forgotten, or obsolete. All that money, all that time, all that wasted talent. If all we lost were a few years, no big deal. But the really scary part is that we never learned what matters most to true experts in math, science, and engineering. We never really learned how to DO math, science, and engineering... And what do we do to try and improve things? We just do MORE of what's wrong. We redouble our efforts. We drill and test students even harder in facts and rote memorization. We work and test them even harder on using the tools for communication (e.g. code) rather than the tools for thought (e.g. intuition, visualization, etc.)... The WaterFall Model of education is failing like never before. We need Agile Learning.