Robotics education as a tangential learning platform

credits: Extra Credits

For those of you who have read the title, most of you are already in discomfiture and are wondering why does the word “Tangential” figure in a write up related to learning. Well, for starters, Tangential learning is a process by which people indulge in self-education if a topic is exposed to them in a context that they already seem to enjoy. Some valid instances could involve examples, where we could watch a movie praising classical music and then be motivated to learn more about the history of that artform. Scientists have observed this method of learning as an effective means of education with high retention rates.

This form of tangential learning is rather involuntary and represents innate curiosity in us learners. Not just movies, even other forms of activity such as watching documentary, visiting art galleries and playing video games could draw us to the context and make us better learners in that particular context. While this is an interesting means for learning, there is no such contemporary in mainstream education. Mainstream education does not provide with enough such avenues where kids can take a break from the rigorous routine and explore newer concepts in their area of choice. This means that the curiosity and love for learning is curbed in its buds and students are forced to stick to the trodden path in learning. 

A rudimentary exploration of existing processes reveals that tangential learning from mainstream education hasn’t existed and a major reason for the same could be the fact that mainstream education system does not incentivize such activities undertaken by children. This is something that has an adverse impact on student curiosity levels, and in some cases happiness levels too.

Mainstream education which is bogged down by its desire to impart parity in education fails to provide with scope or time for students to explore their areas of interest. Even if there exist courseware for students to pursue and explore within the outreach of their subjects, students are actively discouraged from leaving the existing track. This means that budding engineers and scientists cannot specialize in their areas of interests such as electronics or astronomy or roboting in their school lives and have to wait for the completion of their undergrad and postgrad studies before they can move on to pursue their passions.

We at Kidobotikz are not partial to this bias towards learning. We believe that tangential learning should never be inhibited whatever be the age of the candidate. He or she deserves to explore his/her area of interest even if he is not institutionally qualified to pursue high technology concepts. Our kits have been designed to give students a taste of high technology concepts in engineering and robotics. Students can pursue several interesting concepts such as electronics, mechanics, programming while they are still in their schooling years. Our platform has been designed to democratize such core technologies to the comprehensible level of school students. This we believe is our bit towards tangential learning. 

Happy roboting ! !