I’m a Digital Dad
I’m a digital dad with one main focus – I want to provide opportunities for my son and daughter to discover and become who and what they want to be.
I’m also very selfish
- I want to know what my kids are doing, be interested in it and be excited about it.
- I want them to understand how to work through problems and discover new ways of thinking.
- I want to help them celebrate their successes and be there when they need a little help or a nudge in the right direction.
- I want my kids to do something they love.
- I want them to spend their time accomplishing things they are proud of, growing their own families, and having lunch with me.
- I want to share ideas with my kids, compare notes on cool stuff and have them teach me about all the amazing things they discover in their virtual and real world travels.
- I want them to outgrow my interests and my limitations.
- I want them to help me discover new ideas.
- I want them close to home. Now. When they are in college or university. AND when they are adults creating opportunities for themselves and for others.
I like robots
I like robots. So do my kids. I still remember my first robot, it sucked the power out of a stack of ‘D’ cells in about 10 minutes. It lit up like a Christmas tree and walked in a straight line across the floor. It bumped into walls and got stuck under furniture. It didn’t do much, really, but it was amazing. It was the future. It was space travel. It was ‘Martians landing in the living room’. It was fun to take it apart. It was fun to figure out how it worked. It was fun to put it back together. I’m a nerd.
Can parents inspire?
As parents, we want to think we can inspire our kids to greatness. But to inspire, we need to be great teachers. Sometimes we are, but sometimes we’re not smart enough, or good enough, or patient enough. That’s when we need to understand our limits and look for help.
Fast-Forward
Fast-forward a few years … while looking for a suitable venue for our son’s 10th birthday party, my wife and I came across a place in Oakville called FastCats. We walked in and … wow! They had an amazing indoor remote control race track — it was huge, and it looked like a lot of fun. We signed up and the party was a big hit. Not long afterwards, FastCats started a new club called eBots – they offered summer camps focused on building Lego® robots. Enough said.
My kids are nerds, I blame it on eBOTS
It’s four years later. My 14 year old son and 13 year old daughter are still:
- Designing, building and programming robots
- Preparing and presenting detailed projects that aim to provide solutions to complex transportation and medical problems
- Working closely with like-minded techno-kids
- Learning about and engaging in skill-enhancing teamwork
- Documenting projects and posting details in photos, blog posts and videos online
- Researching and learning from experts in many different fields (many are parents of other eBots kids!)
- Sharing insights and discoveries with the community
- Taking part in regional and provincial competitions
- Learning through trial and error
And loving it. They are growing fast, gaining confidence through meeting and exceeding technical and creative challenges. Every week. About 15 minutes from home in Oakville. They’ve learned problem solving skills and a ton about technology, but, more importantly, they’ve learned how to lead and be part of a team. They’ve been inspired.
A little about eBots
The race never slows down at eBOTS / FASTCATS
I caught up with John and Pam, owners and operators of eBots and FastCats, a few days after 3 of the 4 teams they entered in First® Lego® League competitions walked away with the top 3 honours (out of 50 competing teams) at the provincial finals, taking trophies as Provincial Champions, 2nd Place Grand Champions and Robot Mechanical Design winners.
Like so many small, entrepreneurial businesspeople — with or without a technology focus – John and Pam are constantly busy, simultaneously running, promoting and growing their business. Hot on the heels of the FLL competition wins, John and Pam were “getting ready for [a trip to] Florida, madly programming and running Friday night Lego™ club, plus, the next day, running a full day of club sessions AND 3 remote control racing birthday parties”.
Even with all of this on the go, they found a little precious time to answer a few questions and help me tell you what eBots is all about.
BILL: How did eBots get started?
PAM: “We owned FastCats [an indoor remote control race track] and needed to bring in some extra summer revenue — racing was quiet in the summer months, the building sat empty for the days of July and August — so I suggested to John that we either rent the space out to a summer camp or do one of our own. John had experience with programming and technology, and we had experience with Lego® robotics from opportunities our children had taken advantage of at River Oaks Public School in Oakville. So it was a natural fit to set up eBots and give it a try.”
BILL: What do kids learn at eBots?
PAM: “We assume that the children who sign up will already love to build with Lego®. But, our mission is to engage children in designing, building and programming a Lego® robot through active, creative and meaningful learning. We enable kids to explore science, technology, engineering and math in a fun, hands–on way while allowing them to excel in their ability to problem solve, stimulate critical thinking, communicate and work in groups. Our intent is to create a life-long hobby that combines learning and play! We’ve received many comments from parents about how different their children’s approach to a problem is after working through a variety of programming issues. It’s great, we want the kids to be challenged and encounter ‘problems’ so they can learn and discover real life applications in the results. We spend a lot of time on teamwork too – providing situations where social interaction and ways of dealing with conflict help develop collaboration skills.”
BILL: How do kids apply what they learn at eBots?
PAM: “The logical order of programming leads naturally into so many other areas of life — organization, problem solving, time management, strategy, construction and design principles — there is always something new to learn! Our hands-on approach has so many advantages — we firmly believe that in order to truly learn science, the kids must ‘do’ science. It must be fun and clearly result in developing the curiosity, competency, creativity and caring of the kids that are involved in it. And it doesn’t stop when the kids go home — they often work in groups on school teams, projects and homework assignments. As their skills grow, the kids can get involved in our First® Lego® League competitive teams as well. They can even work their way up to mentoring other teams as they get older — many of our more experienced kids volunteer with us in the summer and become expert enough to, potentially, extend their interest into helping a neighbourhood school or Lego® club. “
BILL: What is First® Lego® League (FLL)?
PAM: “The First® Lego® League website at http://www.firstlegoleague.org sums it up pretty well.” From the First® Lego® League website:
“Every year in September, FLL releases a Challenge, which is based on a real-world scientific topic. Each Challenge has two parts: the Robot Game and the Project. Teams of up to ten children, with one adult coach, participate in the Challenge by programming an autonomous robot to score points on a themed playing field (Robot Game) and developing a solution to a problem they have identified (Project). Teams may then choose to attend an official tournament, hosted by one of our Operational Partners. Past Challenges have been based on topics such as nanotechnology, climate, quality of life for the handicapped population, and transportation. By designing our Challenges around such topics, participants are exposed to potential career paths within a chosen Challenge topic, in addition to solidifying the STEM principles that naturally come from participating in a robotics program. Team members also learn valuable life and employment skills which will benefit them no matter which career path they choose.”
BILL: How would you describe the experience your students gain from taking part in First® Lego® League?
PAM: “This is HUGE — I think they get everything we’ve talked about and more. They work closely together for 11 weeks to prepare both a robot and a team project. The teamwork aspect is one of the most important parts of the competition – more important, in fact, than the performance of the robot. Time management becomes more and more important as weeks progress – they really have a very limited amount of time. But I think above all, the kids want, and in some cases, feel a strong need to do well and excel, certainly with the senior teams this is there! The competition is very important to them, being able to measure themselves against the others, really feeling proud of what they have accomplished. And they love being surrounded by other children who think the way they do. At the competitions, hundreds of robot lovers gather … to play, learn and enjoy. “
BILL: How do you think your work with kids may be contributing to building Halton into a global hub for technology innovation and entrepreneurship?
PAM: “We offer what we wish every child had the opportunity to get in school, like our children did. For those that cannot take part in a Lego™ club at school, we are here. At the very least we hope we are turning more kids on to the idea of ‘thinking’ as an alternative to passively watching TV and playing video games. In our clubs, kids can design and built robots that perform specific tasks and meet specific goals, then play with them, figure out what works and what doesn’t, and work to make them better. They can take their robots apart and rebuild them as many times as they want. They learn through doing – trying and failing, and trying again. And they see that failing is often the only way to make progress and succeed in the end. They are challenged and have fun at the same time!”
Great People, Big Hearts, Great Insights….Fantastic Teachers
The work Pam and John have been doing with kids is going to go a long way towards not just inspiring, but actually building the next generation of technology innovators, pioneers and champions in Halton. They inspire kids, and they inspire parents, working tirelessly to prepare kids for First® Lego® League competitions. Even after the competitions, the learning never stops. We need to uncover more technology gems like eBots, close to home.
Are you a Techie?
Are you a techie? Are your kids techies? What do you like to do with your kids? How do you inspire them? How do they inspire you? Are they future technology entrepreneurs? Please leave a comment and let me know.
About John, Technology and eBOTS
John is the NXT brick at the heart of eBots, an Oakville-based club that teaches kids problem solving skills, teamwork and how to design, build and program robots. John started as a programmer after attending the University of Waterloo in computer studies. He taught computer classes for children and adults at the Ontario Science Centre in the early 80’s, then worked as a contract programmer for a short time before joining MacKenzie Financial Corp. as a full time programmer in 1990. At MacKenzie, John’s people skills and team management style helped him rapidly progress to the position of Chief Information Officer. He set aside corporate pursuits in 2007, after 17 years of dedicated service, diving headfirst into a successful side-business — FastCats race track in Oakville — taking a long-needed break and a couple of years to figure out what to do next. During that time, eBots was born
eBots courses run after school and on Saturdays in the Fall, Winter and Spring, with full and half-day camps in the Summer. eBots and FastCats RC birthday parties are located at 220 Wyecroft Rd., Unit 101, Oakville. For more information, contact info@ebots.ca or call 905 337 1299.
About the Silicon Halton blogger
Bill Rasmussen is an anomalous entrepreneurial nerd. He has worked his way through a progression of intensely creative and technical positions (most involving the use of computers in some capacity), from professional musician to draughtsman, designer for theatre, videographer and video editor, business manager, product developer, graphic artist, web designer, web developer and programmer, UX designer, data modeller, project manager, team builder, product manager and marketer. He is currently Digital & eMarketing Manager for a massively successful educational publisher and technology solution provider with over 35,000 brilliant team members grouped conveniently together in offices around the world. Bill occasionally finds time to write meandering posts that are way too long to fit anywhere but on the web. This is definitely not a tweet!