Before I get to the criticism, here are some things I do like:

• It’s VERY comprehensive; name nearly any topic and it’s covered.
• Sal has a nice voice.
• The explanations of concepts are VERY clear, though they lack much context for meaningful learning, which is where my criticism begins.

While a few of the sites videos are presented in a contemporary and meaningful context, most of the site’s videos lack contextual meaning to most young people. Take the math videos for example; a quick dive in and you find a bunch of letters, numbers, and lines on a board that lack context and meaning. Folks, you are looking at the same explanations that were made to you once upon a time in your high school algebra class, few if any of which you actually remember! If you didn’t RETAIN the information back then, why would you expect to retain it now? Because the lines, numbers, and letters are IN COLOR?

Along with the promotion of this resource I have also seen the concept of the “flipped classroom” presented. Okay, there’s some potential here. But unless you have a capable teacher that is able to make the in-class part of the learning motivating and meaningful to their students, Sal will likely have wasted his time.

I see that this might be a great resource for SOME teachers and SOME students, particularly those that are “self-motivated” high achievers.  But, this is not for ALL students, and ALL is where it’s at in terms of where we need to focus our attention. Unfortunately, this resource will best serve the students that were already best served by great teachers and supportive families. This will do very little if anything to help the students and families that remain in the most need of help. It is highly unlikely that this itself will change things as much as the many lauding it say it will. In fact, it may cause a deeper divide rather than be a great equalizer.

There is little inherently meaningful or motivating in any of the Khan videos that I have viewed, which to me says that there will be zero learning. I have seen many audiences of educators hear the mention of the academy shake their heads in agreement that this is such a wonderful resource. That scares me. No one I know in education is taking a critical look at this in light of what research tells us about contextual meaning and motivation as they relate to learning.

Students need to find meaning and motivation in their learning experiences and I fear they won’t find them at the Khan Academy.  Put the learning in context that means something to students. Let the students lead the way to the topics by selecting their own project work and we’ll be onto something in terms of motivation. Both are keys to educational success and to a student’s ingenuity.

Young people need to know that technology is not magic. They need to begin to appreciate the designed world beginning at a very young age. This is not only for the future engineers among us. This core appreciation and understanding will help all people be informed consumers and creators of new technologies.

How do you begin to build this understanding? Have young children take things apart and explore their inner workings. Before you toss that broken Wii remote in the garbage, help a young person carefully and safely explore its insides.

Ask them questions about the toys and games that fill their lives. Where do you think that board game was made? Who do you think invented it? What is it made of? Was it made in a factory?

Asking questions and encouraging inquiry and hands-on activity at a young age will begin to develop the kind of lifelong learning and abilities that will ensure the future success of young individuals and our society. And, in some cases, it will lead to the next great inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs, and designers.

As I began to read again about the power grid on HowStuffWorks.com and Wikipedia, perhaps the most startling factor is the age of the infrastructure.  Many of the devices that bring us power from generation to distribution to the home or business are fifty years old or even older.  This factor, while it entered the minds of many during the Northeast Blackout of 2003, continues to hold the system and its reliability back.  Yet, just because something can still perform its task in a system does not mean that it would not improve the system if replaced.

Another important concept in this discussion is that of redundancy in system design.  Redundancy is a most important factor in the reliability of any system.  Voting systems include software and hardware redundancy to increase reliability.  In the case of the power grid, I imagine that more heavily populated areas such as my suburban neighborhood fare better that rural areas.  Think of it this way: if a tree falls and knocks out a power line or if a transformer explodes due to an electrical surge (check out this YouTube video), if there is redundancy in the system circuitry that allows another path for the electricity to get to your home, your lights might flicker for a moment, but your power will remain on.  As you consider the cabling around your neighborhood, you might be able to see how a suburban city layout might fare better as I suggest.  But, one should also consider that redundancy designed into a system always comes with a higher cost.

I also wonder how people with solar panels and other “off-the-grid” technologies made it through this storm.  I thought of technologies such as solid oxide fuel cells such as the “Bloom Box” as it was featured on this episode of 60 Minutes, which could eventually take us off of a grid system entirely.

A final concept for this topic is logistics.  Think about the planning and logistics that go into getting the power back on where it was lost.  Just a few hundred or few thousand people, machines, tools, and vehicles restoring systems for a few hundred thousand or a few million people takes planning and preparation.  I imagine many systems engineers and others are working behind the scenes during this time. If not for their planning, hours might turn into days and days might turn into weeks before normalcy can be restored.

So, these are some topics from this “teachable moment” as we call it in education.  Part of the ingenuity of our people and society comes from understanding of and appreciation for products, systems and topics such as the power grid, infrastructure, redundancy, alternate energy, and logistics.

Just because a student is good in math and science doesn’t mean that they would like being an engineer.  Further, with the dropout and transfer rates in engineering programs at the university level so high, we owe it to our younger students to teach them more about what engineers do and how they design and develop new technologies.  Part of the reason we import engineering talent from other countries is because students do not explore technology, innovation, design, and engineering in every K-12 school.

I’ve asked several engineers what abilities they think are most valuable to them in their profession day-to-day.  Many cite things like the ability to create and innovate, the ability to apply math and science to practical design situations, the ability to work as a member of a team, and the ability to solve technological problems.  While math and science courses K-12 provide an appropriate math and science background, where are students given opportunities to explore and develop these other, sometimes intangible, things that seem to be so important to professional engineers?  In other words, where are they given the opportunity to develop and apply their ingenuity?

Many do not realize that there are Technology Education programs in some schools that introduce these things with a direct approach and give students a taste of what it would be like to be an engineer.  Teachers in such programs challenge their students everyday with problems designed to spur creativity.  I’ve also asked a number of engineers if and how they got interested in the field as children, and they almost always say, “I was the kid that was always tinkering with things around the house and driving my parents crazy in the process.”  That tinkering by the way, is early development of the ability to conduct critical analysis, an ability that is at the heart of engineering.

Technology Education programs at all grade levels seek to afford students opportunities to tinker, to discover how things work, and to explore the designed world.  At the elementary school level, students may learn about the basics of electricity by actually building simple circuits or about simple machines designed for specific tasks.  In middle school, students may explore concepts in more detail, perhaps by designing and building a model of a bridge or a gliding aircraft.  In high school, students may have opportunities to design an affordable home, take something apart to see how it works, or design and build a robot that would be used for a rescue mission or some other specific purpose.  They also can and should solve problems of their own choosing and direction.  All of these experiences are akin to the processes of engineering.

This is the type of learning that can enhance a future engineer’s experience, but also the type that cannot be included in the typical upper grade level math or science classroom for one main reason: math and science teachers generally do not have the time and most likely do not have the interest nor the expertise needed for in depth study of technology.

There is another underlying issue related to this discussion, and it is the under-representation of women in the engineering field.  One of the reasons the study of technology and engineering should happen early in elementary school is because research shows that negative attitudes about such topics stem from a lack of experiences at primary grade levels. Unless Technology Education is required off all students at all grade levels, it will be tougher to get young women interested in engineering and technology related fields.  This is the foremost reason that elementary educators will also need the tools to be able to integrate these concepts into their lessons.

Technology education and the development of students’ ingenuity can have other broad reaching impacts for all students.  While engineering is considered by most to be a challenging field, there is an element of technology education that is good for all to know.  It is important for all students to understand the nature and process of technological development and activity on some level.  It will help them make informed decisions as consumers about whether to buy a hybrid car or whether to invest in that new high-tech device.  Finally, it would help them to develop the needed in any job such as teamwork, creativity, and the ability to apply knowledge.

Right now, most schools have two parts of what may be considered the ingenuity toolkit in place in math and science.  What’s needed to ensure future economic prosperity and technological innovation is the third piece, the study of technology.

Versions of this post have appeared on NJ.com and the New Jersey Tech News.

Johnny’s new math teacher, Ms. Mathematica, has a reputation.  She is a twenty year veteran in the classroom and she is known for having a tough and very disciplined approach to teaching mathematics. She has even had three students go on to earn doctoral degrees in mathematics and another two of her students actually have gone on to become math teachers themselves.  Ms. Mathematica is one that doesn’t believe in partial credit. Either the entire problem is done correctly or it is wrong.

After a strong first few weeks in class, Johnny soon reverts to old “habits.” Ms. Mathematica’s class is highly structured.  Even when students are working together in groups, they are all expected to be doing the same thing at the same time.  Johnny can often be seen gazing out the classroom window during class.  He hasn’t caused any disruptions during class, but despite Ms. Mathematica’s reminders to stay focused on the work, he has simply lost concentration.

Instead of doing his homework after school, Johnny goes to his room and plays video games.  Interestingly, he is good at one particular game called World of the Sorcerer’s Magic. Typically, he plays for about an hour and a half after school, then breaks to come to dinner. He eats hurriedly, but not fast enough for his parents to tell him to slow down. Throughout dinner he is always just so anxious to get back to playing. Between chatter about the day with his family, his mind is thinking about the maneuvers that will get him to the next level of the game. Because he participated in the family discussion and he didn’t eat too too fast, somehow it doesn’t seem impolite for him to excuse himself to go back to his room to play some more.

So then, where and how did Johnny become more apathetic toward math and more interested in his video game? The answer to both, I believe, is all about motivation, and, more specifically, his ability to envision his own success in each endeavor.

How is the motivation to succeed in math any different that motivation to succeed at video games? The rewards for both seem to be about the same. You don’t ordinarily and immediately win money when you play video games, nor do you if you are good math. You can win praise from your peers for both; I’ve heard just as many students praise a friend for being good at math as I have the same for video games.  Johnny’s not necessarily going to find a nice girlfriend just by virtue of being good at one or the other.

Motivation, by the way, to those outside of the education profession, is THE KEY to learning.  So many education research studies point to motivation as the main factor in student learning, but most of the education world is slow to catch up.

You see, I don’t believe that motivation in this sense is innate or intrinsic.  In fact, anything you’d probably say is intrinsic about motivation is probably due simply to earlier experience and successes.  But, I do believe it is closely linked to vision on the part of the young person. If someone can see themselves succeeding at any task, they can become motivated to achieve.

In video games, players can easily envision success and can also SEE and FEEL evidence of it quickly.  New levels of performance are constantly obtained.  Although people may spend hours trying to get passed that one level, they will continue onto the next because they have done something similar before. Wow, just writing this is bringing me back to the journey to navigate Super Mario Brothers as I did as a kid.

Now let’s take this out of the learning math and video games context and talk about what it looks like in trying to develop one’s ingenuity.  Technology and engineering teachers are among the few in schools that are willing to let students set their own direction for projects.  Ultimately, it works best when students can choose and frame their own projects and constraints.  Choosing and directing projects of their own is about as motivating for young people as it can get.  It’s not uncommon to find a teacher that is encouraging their students to write down information about everyday problems with the hope they can focus on one of them for a class project.

Even if the project work is contrived or set by the teacher, motivation is enhanced because the hands-on nature of the work allows more students the chance to be able to succeed. No matter what the project is, the fact that there are many many different possibilities in terms of how to approach and solve a design problem allows students to see just as many possibilities for success. Even though there may be constraints of the problem to deal with, there are still so many possibilities.

So then, is there any hope for Johnny in Ms. Mathematica’s class?  Where Johnny saw no chance to succeed, his motivation disappeared.  He was feeling some success earlier that summer with his tutor because in that one-to-one situation it was much easier to succeed and in that particular setting the motivation appeared much faster.  But, this is why I try to advocate for learning about technology and engineering and for the development of the ingenuity of our young people. It’s because the motivation that I’ve witnessed students feeling in these settings not only helps them to develop and apply their ingenuity in a real and more motivating context, I’ve also witnessed how it can help students envision success in other school subjects.

So, where we would normally say “he’s got a lack of concentration,” we should be admitting there’s a lack of motivation. And, we’ve got to lose this attitude that all kids should want to learn just so that they can better themselves.  The lack of concentration comes more from the school itself, so then the school itself should take responsibility for the motivation.  Let’s also hope that Johnny is able to feel some success in mathematics by applying it in his technology and engineering class.

Most in my profession have wanted to hang their hats on the term “technological literacy,” especially since the release of the National Standards for Technological Literacy by the ITEEA in 2001.  Is technological literacy a personal quality? Yes. Is it measurable? Well, yes, but many would set out to measure someone’s proficiency using Microsoft Word in an effort to describe a young person’s “technological literacy.” Unfortunately, the time when my profession could have captured this term and made it their own has long since sailed away.

“Design” is a pretty understandable term, but it is not a personal quality. It’s more a verb or activity and also sounds like something art teachers teach. I’ve taught many students over the years about the design loop or the other design processes, but I’d rather hang my hat on a personal quality as an outcome of teaching.

Some like to use the term “engineering.”  Does “engineering” describe a great deal of what we teach and how we teach it? Yes, but engineering (the verb) doesn’t describe everything that I’d want children to develop through their education. Add to that the fact that engineering is the title of a very specific profession and you might see the problem with widespread adoption of the term as something desirable in every school for every student. Further, engineering is not really a measurable personal quality.

“Innovation” also sounds like a desirable thing. But, I’m not sure that you could call innovation a personal quality.  An innovation to me is more of a thing, a noun.  Yes, there is a describable process behind the term and I want young people to learn to innovate, but innovation really isn’t a personal quality.  Beyond that, innovation seems to have become pretty cliche in the current common vernacular.

There has been a recent rally around the term “STEM” in the realm of education among those in and around my profession.  Is it a very laudable goal that we should be striving toward to have more integrated learning especially at the high school level? Absolutely. But, that may be the best thing that will ever come from the acronym that as far as I can tell was first conceived as a way to organize funding streams instead of as a way to make interdisciplinary connections.  I’d also rather not describe what I’m about in terms of the acronym du jour, which will surely fade into the next catchy acrostic invention.

This brings me to the term “ingenuity,” the namesake of this blog.  Every student should be spending time in school developing their ingenuity, and lots of it.  Looking at some dictionary definitions of the term I find that it is a personal quality.  It’s a term that can be used in conjunction with talent.  There’s an outcome to be had from applying it.  Perhaps we haven’t yet found the most effective way to measure it in an educational setting, but in my heart of hearts I believe that it’s just as measurable as one’s physical fitness.  One can challenge themselves to develop their ingenuity and they can also put it on display in a competitive setting.

So, fifteen years into my education career, I think I’ve decided on the term that I’m going to “be about” and promote it’s development in our young people.  I want my own children to develop their ingenuity because I think it will make them every bit as successful in life as almost anything else.  I want the young people of our nation to develop their ingenuity because I think it’s what has always set us apart from others and I think that will continue.  I want others around the world to develop their ingenuity because with ingenuity becomes independence.