Ed-tech without educators is doomed
Elements 4D is a current project on Kickstarter featuring a set of wooden blocks engraved with the elements of the Periodic Table. When viewed through the frame of an iPad or iPhone, the blocks have “augmented reality” codes that cause them to show up on the screen as clear cubes, labeled with their various properties. If you touch the “hydrogen” block to the “oxygen” block, the screen depicts water sloshing around.
Wow? Yes. Cool? Yes. More educational than a real-life chem lab? Probably not. As my colleague atFast Company, Austin Carr, points out, “On a practical level, it’s slightly unclear how kids will play with the element blocks while holding a tablet (the video demo shows two hands futzing with the cubes, so who is holding the iPad?). And not to get too eggheaded here, but shouldn’t you need two hydrogen blocks and an oxygen block in order to form water? ”
Play-i is another project that will launch a crowdfunding campaign in September. It’s a robot toy designed to teach very young children–as young as five–to program. The robot’s movements and actions can be controlled using a “graphical interface,” dragging and dropping commands in vari