Welcome to Inspire, a blog from FIRST.
After years of inspiring young people, as well as the adults who work with them, we decided it was time to share some of the things that inspire us.
Learn more about Inspire.
Creativity = Learning
Sep 16, 2016 By Kim Wierman, Director, FIRST LEGO® League & FIRST LEGO® League Jr.
When a student’s education is inhibited by the constructs of lectured learning, their creativity suffers. Creativity lends itself to confidence and spontaneity, both crucial elements for a child’s future success.
To groom STEM students, hone their soft skills
Sep 07, 2016 By Sarah Stray, Innovation Awards Manager, FIRST
As schools warm up to new possibilities like robotics competitions, it's hard to deny the potential for STEM to teach teamwork and collaboration to a generation that will need it.
STEM into STEAM: Why the arts are crucial
Aug 25, 2016 By Sydnee Yates, content writer, PDF Supply
The sciences or the arts. Which one do you or did you study in school? This question is pretty standard when talking about education.
Inspired by: Thomas A. Edison
Jul 21, 2016 by FIRST Staff
When it comes to innovation, the sheer volume and depth of Thomas Edison’s 1,093 patents has not been duplicated. Helping to define the standard of living we enjoy today, Edison’s (1847-1931) inventions include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb, and the first system for electricity distribution.
Curricular Innovation: How can we elicit a cultural shift through education?
Jul 15, 2016 by Urvi Shah, CEO and founder of Strategic EdTech LLC, and the Director of Educational Technology and Innovation at a private K-12 school in the Washington, DC area
The United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals to “transform the world” speak to the idea that we need a cultural and societal shift. The aim of the goals is to try to find massive and overarching opportunities to solve the world’s greatest problems, such as educational deficits to food insecurity, economic stagnation, and income inequality. In order to attain these goals, we need a global culture that equips students with the ability to contribute to combating these challenges.
Growing the Next Generation of “Philanthroteens”
Jul 01, 2016 by FIRST Staff
As adults, the way to make the biggest impact on the world is to cultivate something that will outlive us. In order to ensure that we’re making the future a better place to live, we should focus on cultivating the next generation of Philanthroteens.
Here’s to our Makers, all 400,000 of them
Jun 23, 2016In honor of this year’s National Week of Making, we celebrate the more than 400,000 students around the world who invented, tinkered and tech’d their way through the 2015-2016 FIRST season.
Small but mighty: Teacher won’t let STEM struggles become a cautionary tale
Jun 14, 2016 By Naomi Edwards, Educator, Kettle Falls High School, Washington
It was robot inspection time at our first FIRST® Robotics Competition event of the season in Spokane, Washington. Our rookie team just traveled 100 miles from our small logging town of Kettle Falls, Washington, and were stumbling into the field house dragging totes and a clunky robot.
Holistic education
Jun 10, 2016 An educators’ advice for providing young minds with the skills they need to thrive in the modern world
Recently, I was in a faculty meeting, and we had an exercise to brainstorm qualities with which we want to imbue our students. The list included: able to solve problems, ease of teamwork, enthusiasm for learning, compassionate, innovative, curious, creative, fluent in critical thinking, etc.
Inspired by: Seymour Papert
Jun 03, 2016Seymour Papert is a mathematician and computer scientist best known for his contributions to the understanding of children’s learning processes and to the ways in which technology can support learning.