DIY or Do-It-Yourself is a cultural movement that has its roots dating back to the post-World War II era when the entire world rebuild itself after the devastating effect of the world wars. To overcome for the shortage of high demand labour, people took up activities of building homes, furnishing carpentry and painting by themselves. This in-turn drove an industry where products were made more modular to ease their assembly. Important commodity such as furniture, household appliances, domestic implements were all designed in such a way that users could buy them in knocked down kits and then easily assemble them in the confines of our homes and use them without much ado. Some of the best loved products in the industry made their name by catering to the creative and constructive spirit in humans where the users did not just enjoy a particular product but also took home the satisfaction of assembling the product themselves thereby feeling one with it. This aspect of the commodity reached out to a primal instinct in us. When we talk of such commodities (read furniture), a certain Danish conglomerate comes to our mind. With their DIY-styled furniture and highly impressive meatballs, IKEA did more than just sell the furniture for homes. It made users feel at heart the utility of every component in the product.
Moving on, one actually wonders how this act of assembling products or components makes us feel better compared to purchasing an off-the-shelf product. The reason for this lies in our childhood and our constructive upbringing. We as humans love to see things take shape. It is always wonderful to see things evolve from random components and objects into things with definite form and functions. Kids who love playing with building blocks and play-doh or adults who fix motorcycles as a hobby can relate to this primal spirit where they are both creating and learning at the same time. Such activities awaken the less explore cognitive skills of creativity and right-brain thinking in us.
What if such an instinct is used not only for activities of play or fun? What if we could put such strong energies to some good use? Only if there were a curriculum that supported our innate creative spirit and incorporated the same into the courseware as a part of the mainstream education. Such a way of learning would be one that can always harvest our creative and keep our learning processes sharp because it is one we as children would pay attention to and be entertained by.
Team Kidobotikz has always given impetus to the creative and the constructive mindset of children as an untapped potential. Our Kits which aim at providing a fun-filled learning experience to students has always given back more than what it took from the student- the zeal to learn and the desire to innovate. Every student who ever was associated with us not only took back home the knowledge of robotics, but rubbed his creative spirit and potential on to the trainers as well. As an organization this has galvanized our efforts to make the experience of our kits available to all. We look forward to a day where every school going kid who gets back home switches on a maker board rather than a TV show.
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