That Monday afternoon, in high-school gyms across America, kids were battling for the only glory American culture seems to want to dispense to the young these days: sports glory.
And now, with a participant alumni base approaching a million strong, he felt that awareness was.
Kamen had created First (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) nearly twenty years prior.
It was a dream shared by Dean Kamen, a modern-day inventing wizard - often-called "the Edison of his time" - who\'d concocted the very same First Robotics Competition that had lured the kids at Dos Pueblos.
He imagined that one day there would be a nation filled with such academies, and a new popular veneration for STEM - a "new cool" - that would return America to its former innovative glory.
All he needed to get the necessary funding was one flashy win - a triumph that would firmly put his Engineering Academy at Dos Pueblos on the map.
In his mind\'s eye, he saw an even more robust academy within Dos Pueblos that would make science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) cool again, and he knew he was poised on the edge of making that dream a reality.
The fact was, Amir had in mind a different vision for education, one based not on rote learning -- on absorbing facts and figures -- but on active creation.
But for their mentor, Amir Abo-Shaeer, much more hung in the balance.
If you asked these brainiacs what the stakes were that First week of their project, they\'d have told you it was all about winning a Robotics competition - building the Ultimate robot and prevailing in a machine-to-machine contest in front of 25, 000 screaming fans at Atlanta\'s Georgia Dome. students who wanted to put their technical know-how to work.
Q.
A physics Teacher with a dream - the First public high-school Teacher ever to win a Mac Arthur Genius Award -- had rounded up a band of high-I.
But at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California, in a gear-cluttered classroom, a different type of "cool" was brewing.
That Monday afternoon, in high-school gyms across America, kids were battling for the only glory American culture seems to want to dispense to the young these days: sports glory
