Getting Young Kids Interested in Technology

Robotics

Frank Riordan

01/03/2013

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I'm always trying to get my daughters, ages 8 & 5, interested in what we do here at DMC. It's a challenge because I have a hard enough time explaining what DMC does to someone I meet at a cocktail party, never mind a couple of young kids. However, I recently had two great experiences with them that actually piqued their interest. The first was a trip to Legoland in Carlsbad, California. In addition to Miniland USA, Land of Adventure and other fun rides, there also is a Lego Factory Tour, featuring real automated machinery demonstrating molding, decorating, assembling, and packing of LEGO^® products. The discussion went something along the lines of:

Me: "Do you see how this works? There's a computer that controls all of that equipment and instructions that tell the computer what to do. DMC writes those instructions for machines like this."

Kelsey (at the time 4): "So you make Legos?"

Me: "We write software that controls machines like this."

Kelsey: "Can we go to the gift shop?"

A few weeks after returning from Legoland we went to The Museum of Science and Industry, the first museum I visited in Chicago when I moved here over 20 years ago. This is still my favorite museum and I take my daughters there frequently.

A fantastic exhibit that does an amazing job of showcasing many of the automation technologies we implement is the Toymaker 3000: An Adventure in Automation. It's a multi-station assembly line that produces customized gravitron tops. It's highly engaging as you can watch your own top being created, tested, packaged and personally delivered. I think exhibits like these are an excellent way to spark interest in science and engineering at a young age.

Now if I can only translate the cool factor from these exhbits to inspire my kids to do their math homework...