Silicon Classroom Day 6— Friday
Wow! This alternate spring break is almost over; what a quick long, adventurous, hilarious, busy, and tiring few days of visits.
Luckily, in comparison to the early sleep deprived mornings of the past few days friday offered some respite.
Gloria’s annoyingly loud alarm went off later than 8! After a quick throw together breakfast of delicious bread and jelly we were off to Imagine K-12, a startup accelerator that provides strategic support and $100k in initial funding to tech companies focused on the education market.
Walking into their nice building in Redwood we were greeted by cofounder and partner, Tim Brady. After shuffling into their humble space we sat down and Tim started his introduction. In short, when Tim’s son was starting school, Tim realized that the classroom his son was in was not much different than the one he was in many years past! Technology has made leaps and bounds, improving many aspects of life, but education has mostly stayed the same. With this in mind Imagine K-12 was born to help improve education.
We asked him to describe some ed-tech startups he funded and his opinion on equity. There were so many amazing startups that have gone through Imagine K-12. Some that stood out were Alt-School- an amazing and innovative take on schools and Plicker- an implementation of QR codes for quick answer tracking. His answer to our question regarding how ed-tech was effecting equity was different than any we had heard before. He made it clear that ed-tech could help the high achieving students of any social-economic background but for those students who didn’t have that “drive” ed-tech doesn’t help, but it definitely doesn’t hurt.
After visting Imagine K-12, we went off to the Exploratorium, a hands-on museum of science also known as a public learning laboratory. At the Exploratorium, we met with Veronica Garcia-Luis, who is project director of the culture and equity team. Veronica introduced us to a panel of speakers on the Exploratorium’s research and efforts to engage a wide variety of visitors.
In particular, we learned about research into what characteristics of an exhibit make it more accessible to girls. The research involved observing hundreds of children (with parental permission!) as they interacted with the museum’s exhibits. One interesting finding was that exhibits with space for observation before interaction were more accessible to girls, and presumably this means that visitors are more comfortable with exhibits once they knew how to work with them. Another interesting tidbit from a panelist was that more colorful exhibits were more welcoming to girls. It’s important to note that many of the factors that can improve the experience for one demographic do not necessarily detract from other groups’ experiences at the museum. Talk about a win-win!
In addition to increasing engagement of girls at the museum, the panelists and Veronica spoke about efforts to make the Exploratorium accessible to the blind community by adding braille labels to exhibits. This and other improvements to the Exploratorium are currently underway.
Of course, after our talk we could not help but roam the Exploratorium. The exhibits spanned all subjects so it was impossible to lose interest. The visitors were of all ages, so we saw the wide reach of the Exploratorium.
ICE CREAM! We had THAT.
Then Tomato House Time, what an experience! Not only was our AirBnB amazing and spacious but it was the perfect place for our group to connect! I wouldn’t have had today any other way. The asian owner was especially amazing, he was not only super thankful for how good we were, but he also didn’t stay and watch us while we slept!
