Do not delay explorations until college.
October 24, 2019 — Recently, NATS Tampa had organized a town-hall meeting where I had the privilege of presenting our findings to a group of high-school students and their parents, on how students may prepare for career success in industries of the future.
In our journey with AlligatorZone, we have learned that a vast majority of college-bound students start with undeclared majors and start exploring the world only after they start college. …
October 23, 2019 — Over the past five years, we at AlligatorZone, have observed how digital natives connect the dots between what they learn in school or from friends on the one hand, and lessons from the real-world startups we feature and their transformative products, on the other. It makes me tremendously optimistic and excited about the future that the children are going to build.
Our teens and tweens belong to a no-nonsense generation.
The views of teens and tweens on matters such as personal privacy, customer empathy, or use of natural resources, are going to surprise many businesses in…
There seems to be a misconception about personal branding as it relates to middle-school and high-school-age children.
In my recent essay announcing our new trajectory, I had talked about getting kids ‘started on a journey of building an authentic and distinctive personal brand for themselves’. That has generated some discussion. “You didn’t explain what you mean by personal branding for children,” said my mother, a career-educator and retired elementary school teacher. Another parent said she didn’t really care about branding children’s image for the outside world. Allow me to clarify what we mean by personal branding in the context of…
What began as a fun family project has evolved into a serious education company with a noble mission
Believe it or not, it’s been five years of delivering AlligatorZone’s free public events! To celebrate our 5-year anniversary, we are changing our trajectory by setting ourselves some lofty goals, and I am really excited about it.
AlligatorZone is morphing into a membership community. Membership will be free, which means we will continue to have event programs where kids and teens can meet cool startups.
What’s particularly exciting is a new set of premium plans that discerning members will be able…
Entrepreneurship is an intensely intellectual and extremely social journey of understanding a problem and solving it in a resourceful manner for people. Entrepreneurship is not just writing a business plan or presenting it to a group of grown-ups to win a medal or a small check.
Entrepreneurship coaching, even for grown-ups, which over-emphasizes the theatrics of a stage performance in a pitch competition puts the cart before the horse. There is a need for public speaking skills, but at a later stage. …
Here are three reasons why it is important that we as parents and guardians must do whatever it takes to make the time to attend AlligatorZone’s events with our school-age children or teens:
1) Startup entrepreneurs are known to change entire industries. Attending AlligatorZone gives families and their children fresh insights into how an entire industry is going to change. When an industry changes, the skills required to find meaningful work also changes. …
A summer camp on skills in entrepreneurship for kids and teens must transcend the cliched business plan, pitch parties and participation trophies. AlligatorZone Academy’s summer camp and after-school enrichment programs aim for a real-world take on imparting startup skills to young minds.
Both 4th graders were good at baking, they had told me. They want to sell baked delicacies. However, in this week’s class, they were simply out of ideas on what to name their bakery. These kids are part of an after-school program that we are piloting to help late-elementary and middle-school students create something of value and make…
Can a TV show inspire an educational activity?
We know kids who love to watch ‘Dog With A Blog’, a Disney TV series about a dog Stan, who can speak English and also type — a dog that documents his life — on a blog. Would it then be a challenge getting the kids who know about such TV shows to use writing as an exercise in reflection?
We decided we would find out if kids would care to write a blog post and also enjoy it.
We dovetailed a specially designed blogging activity to a coursework that we are testing out through a recent workshop of…
Observations from running a kids’ summer workshop on entrepreneurial-mindset.
Last week, I had the privilege of spending some time with kids of ages 11–14 while running a special workshop series, being designed as a premium alternative-learning launchpad for kids to begin to understand how entrepreneurs think. These workshops are held under the banner of AlligatorZone Academy, to support the free public event-program AlligatorZone®, where kids meet cool startups.
A little creativity in assigning chores for digital natives can double as entrepreneurial skills training.
Kids do chores, growing up. However, shouldn’t the chores change with the times? Modern-day kids may be able to learn skills that can be entrepreneurial, by doing higher-level chores once they have mastered making their beds.
In a new series of blog-posts, we are going to start documenting and sharing lessons observed by parents and teachers about children, with a focus on development of an entrepreneurial mindset and entrepreneurial leadership skills in them while still letting them be kids. …
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preparing students for success in the future of work
