I Am Not Smarter Than A Wyoming Fifth Grader

When I was a kid I enjoyed building with Legos. I was no future architect. It was just play. Now the old plastic blocks are being brought back for new ways to learn in school. Wyomingnews.com reported from both Gilchrist and Pioneer Park Elementary.

It was nice to see a $3000 grant from Taco Johns allowed the purchase of 19 Lego WeDo 2.0 kits.

I didn’t follow exactly how it works because kids are smarter than me – because when I was their age it was 1909. Most points were lost on me when I read about attempting to program a small Lego robot to roll backward. Could Legos show me how to program a robot to go forward and backward as well as a fifth grader learned? I wondered, but not for too long, when I saw they used the software on a computer. I’d likely be out of that class right there.

Apparently, as fifth grade teacher Kim Ross was quoted, “They’re used to robots.” That’s nice because robots horrify me. I quit even trying to understand what the toddlers were learning when I saw words like “algorithms,” not in the vocabulary of a guy who feels 120-years-old.

It was the Wyoming Department of Education’s Computer Science Week, which will help prepare students for the job market someday when I’m no longer in it someday. Actually, Cheyenne's job market is already very computer/tech driven. Maybe it will be only more so by graduation time. And no doubt students will be ready.