Show Notes | YouTube | iTunes

In This Episode

• Can a fish be trained like a dog?

• Can a school project be both art and science as well as entertainment and curiosity?

• How do we bring engagement back to the classroom?

  Today's podcast will grab you by the ears and entertain them all the way through.

Welcome to the Table Top Inventing Online Radio Show. Every week we interview successful individuals from across the career spectrum and share their stories. We want parents and educators to learn the tools they need to get and keep the interest and curiosity of teenagers.

Today's guest is a special treat. Zack Dowell knows how to have fun and learn at the same time. He's sort of a professional at it. He's currently working on the most fun project!

This project involves several departments across his campus: math, science, engineering, computer science, theater arts, and Zack is planning to recruit sociology and psychology as well. What kind of a project could capture the interest of so many different kinds of people?

Keep listening, and I'll let Zack tell you.

Every now and then I have a guest that "Nerd Snipes" me. The term "Nerd Sniping" is from the XKCD cartoons, funny but somewhat irreverent. Essentially, today's episode grabbed the nerd inside me, and I got a little excited.

Projects like the one Zack is working on are a perfect example of the kind of learning we seek and value at Table Top Inventing. If you want your kids to be exposed to more fun and interesting applications of technology that capture the imagination, let's talk. Visit our website, ttinvent.com, and find out how we can connect. Kids need inspiration, and we love to provide it--just like Zack is doing at Folsom Lake College.

Original Episode Date: 5/27/16

Category: Innovative Educators

Show Notes | YouTube | iTunes

 In This Episode

• How does a young lady pursuing a career in biogenetics find herself a successful artist?

• How can a small company file a lawsuit against a huge company without getting crushed?

• How do you fall in love with 3D printing after avowing never to use it?

The stories behind these curious juxtapositions are waiting for you in today's podcast.

Welcome to the Table Top Inventing podcast. I am Steve Kurti, aka "the Mad Scientist", and I'm pretty jazzed about something that happened this last week.

We just finished up our first Inventor Camp of 2016 in Apple Valley, CA, last Thursday, but on Wednesday while we were in full swing, I had the coolest thing happen.

One of the challenges this year involves binary numbers, byte conversions, and ASCII tables. If you're a techno geek, you'll get those references, but if you're not, those are terms for how the data moves around in your computer, cell phone, and the internet. I wanted the kids to see under the hood so-to-speak and see that things aren't really as mysterious as they seem.

I was talking to Lilli and Trevor who were tasked with programming up a little solution for encoding letters and numbers into binary, and Lilli was telling me about how her program worked. She was pretty excited that she could look at the 8-bit represented by the LED lights and look up the letter on a chart.

I turned to Trevor to ask him if he knew what they needed to do next. He answered,

"Yup. I'll get to that in a minute, but right now...

MY BRAIN IS ON FIRE!"

It was so awesome and so funny, I had a fit of laughter on the spot. That is what I love to see: Kids with their imagination on fire. 

Today's guest, Tracy Hazzard, also loves to see kids with their imagination on fire. Tracy is the CEO of Hazz Design Consulting, a design company headquartered in Orange County, CA. Let's find out how Tracy is igniting the imagination. 

Tracy said my favorite phrase "Successful Failure". We have a dozen different ways to say this same thing: "failing forward", "Failure is the first step to success", and a host of others. The basic idea is to stop being so afraid of being wrong or of making a mistake along the way.

Anything big requires learning, and true learning always starts by being bad at something before being really good at it. If you want your kids to experience "successful failure", check out Inventor Camp at TTInvent.com.

Let's Ignite more Imagination.

Original Episode Date: May 5, 2016

Category: Business Professional