Teach a Teacher - I'll send you hardware!
Ken Gracey
Posts: 7,392
Hey all,
I've been off the forums for a long time, much longer than I've expected - a combination of taking a break, regular Parallax work (new educational program, a significant introduction of Parallax in Chinese universities, and some special (!) projects). Hopefully this week I'll be able to return here in earnest and keep track of what's going on. In the meantime, if there are customer service/support/engineering requests that arise please do PM me a link or information so I can see that everything is handled on your behalf. When I can only pop in from time to time I sometimes discover customer service issues we should address far more proactively. Please feel free to bring these to my attention, no matter how small - help us do exactly what you want us to do to make your efforts a success.
And the reason I make this post: Teach a Teacher!
I would appreciate your help. Teachers are a tough group to reach - they don't read advertisements. All of our educational successes in marketing outreach are a result of referrals, educator's courses, and one-on-one introductions. Teachers simply need to see what we offer, and once they share it with students it takes on a life of it's own.
Therefore we introduce:
http://beta.www.parallax.com/news/jul11-2013/introduce-educator-parallax-earn-credit
It's simple. Take our products to a teacher and share them, in person. We'll reward you with $100 of whatever you want. Many of you already do this without the incentive, but we're happy to say "thanks" for the support.
This program will likely run a long time. I imagine it'll be difficult to reach teachers in the summer, but school starts up again really soon.
Thanks for being part of our team.
Sincerely,
Ken Gracey
I've been off the forums for a long time, much longer than I've expected - a combination of taking a break, regular Parallax work (new educational program, a significant introduction of Parallax in Chinese universities, and some special (!) projects). Hopefully this week I'll be able to return here in earnest and keep track of what's going on. In the meantime, if there are customer service/support/engineering requests that arise please do PM me a link or information so I can see that everything is handled on your behalf. When I can only pop in from time to time I sometimes discover customer service issues we should address far more proactively. Please feel free to bring these to my attention, no matter how small - help us do exactly what you want us to do to make your efforts a success.
And the reason I make this post: Teach a Teacher!
I would appreciate your help. Teachers are a tough group to reach - they don't read advertisements. All of our educational successes in marketing outreach are a result of referrals, educator's courses, and one-on-one introductions. Teachers simply need to see what we offer, and once they share it with students it takes on a life of it's own.
Therefore we introduce:
http://beta.www.parallax.com/news/jul11-2013/introduce-educator-parallax-earn-credit
It's simple. Take our products to a teacher and share them, in person. We'll reward you with $100 of whatever you want. Many of you already do this without the incentive, but we're happy to say "thanks" for the support.
This program will likely run a long time. I imagine it'll be difficult to reach teachers in the summer, but school starts up again really soon.
Thanks for being part of our team.
Sincerely,
Ken Gracey
Comments
I wish you great success with this. I'll be looking for a way to help...
I'm sure your church already has lots of flavor flavor - people play instruments in the service and sing out loudly. Could we add to this excitement? What about a line follower for collection of the offering? You could task the congregation with "next week, if you bring more money for the offering I'll use a robot to collect it!". Or perhaps I should bring a quadcopter in to fly your sermon into the pulpit from the back? That would be an amazing program, but would probably miss the whole point.
Robots and church. . .
Speaking of which, kudos and thanks to your own Jim Carey for donating numerous HW Boards to the class. Initially, I was loaning my own few boards to the students and they had to work in groups of 3-4. Jim came through with one per student, which made things infinitely better, and not a single board was ever blown up in those beginner's classes. My little testimony to Parallax, its great people and products!
But I did have to say most. In Asian cultures, gifts are always warmly received. But what happens after than can be anybody's guess. The items might get set aside and forgotten, passed on to a colleague, or delegated to a bright student.
I have tried giving BasicStamps and Propellers to people in the right places in education. But so far the results have been nil as far as I can tell. The average person or parent is not thinking of microcontrollers as a recreation. And the Kaohsiung retail electronic shops can't seem to comprehend BasicStamps or Propellers at all. I have shown them to salepeople that look quite confused by them. They still offer 8051 and 8052 kits for hobby and education purposes. Arduino is around but only on the internet and I even have an all Chinese introduction to the Arduino. There may be some Raspberry PI users as well, but I've no idea where.
It may take a different approach in Asia. I suspect that if you work a top-down approach and get the #1 university involved, it might be that everyone will want to adopt the same. So starting with Taiwan National University, NTU, in Taipei just might bring faster results. From there, someone might do something of an educational grant with the three National Science and Technology Museums in Taipei, Taijung, and Kaohsiung to provide outreach to high school and younger kids.
I also found that even with educators that were deeply involved in a field that required them to apply English in their research, they often wanted to keep to a very narrow scope. It seems they didn't feel that their English ability was good enough for exploring items outside their own specialty. Within their own narrow scope, they toil 24/7, but that is it.
Americans are quite remarkable in how broad their knowledge and interest are compared to people throughout the world.
We did a skit for 350 parents and kids for our youth group back in May - It was a Star Wars Spoof - we called it "Spirit Wars"...(this was the intro that set the tone for the 12 minute skit
I was "O-Bible Kenobi", accompanied by Luke Heavenwalker, Praises Leia and R2M2 (our trusty sidekick - a full blown R2D2 non-look-alike 36" tall RC MadeUSA platform - The adults understood the "skit" but the kids we're "glued to R2" - he was definitely the hit of the evening. Our skits mission was to defeat the evil "Dearth Verses".
Add an EMIC-2 to the robot?: "Look, this is an offering plate - you can do better than that!"
Whoops, dark clouds are forming...lightning strike imminent? Shutting up now!
-MattG
And Ken recently posted this:
So are ActivityBots part of the Teach a Teacher program? I think I'd personally be more likely to recommend an ActivityBot than the other options listed in the teach a teacher program.
Duane, absolutely. The program was started before I was allowed to talk about the ActivityBot, but now it's available. I think it's the best recommendation for high school, community college, college and university. If you can introduce a teacher to us with this robot that'd be fantastic.
If there is someone in the bay area who has been teetering on the idea of doing this I would be more than happy to assist!
What's the hangup, Tegan? I think you're perfect for this task - it takes a student to teach a teacher. You're already familiar with all the hardware, too.
If you want Ken, I could take one to our local schools, I also have many teacher friends.
I've sent you an email, with a little more detail.
Cheers,
Jim.