Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Maker Education Forum Closing Remarks: Rajiv Mongia”.
And i have to admit, i’m really humbled to be up here in front of you all. I mean i’m just like kind of nervous and stunned by you, and i really do mean that sincerely i mean um. I have a two-year-old and i’m really excited to see what he’s gon na be able to. These are the types of people that are gon na teach him, because it’s so different than what i experienced myself.
And this is where i’m completely going off script. Because it’s what i wrote during the course of the day, because i kind of had one of those very, very typical education experiences um. You know my dad immigrated from india, so he went and got his phd and basically that was drilled into my head and that’s what i was going to go off and do and that’s what i did do but um, but it wasn’t it’s. Those are not. Actually, the things that i actually remembered, i actually feel like. I got saved from a pretty meaningless life in the sense of no, i mean um, my advisor in graduate school was a tinkerer and a player, and so our my graduate degree. Instead of being this long research endeavor that i did ended up being basically my advisor and i’m meeting in the morning, i said huh, i wonder what happens if you did the following types of things and i would basically tinker in the lab with combustion stuff, which Means i’ve got to burn stuff all afternoon long and blow things up every once in a while, including the exhaust work duct in the in the building. But that was important because it was kind of the whole making process which you know led to where my career went off, to which was a very different direction than where my father was, which was the very typical engineer worked at. You know gas turbine company for 20 years and just a small little part of a huge enormous machine is what he worked on. But for me, i be by virtue of that making experience felt confident to be able to do crazy thanks. You know we did build a gas turbine engine from scratch, using turbochargers and parts from a junkyard and so on so forth, and if i’d gone through a typical process of education, i don’t think i’d be. You know comfortable doing things like that.
Um and one other thing that kind of struck me again usually random thoughts. Please take away the green salt. Um is the comment that the chancellor said about. Don’T be scared that you don’t necessarily know the materials that you’re teaching um. I lead a team of really crazy, smart people and they know stuff well beyond what i know and i think that’s: okay, you’re, the facilitator, you’re the mentor and you want to walk them through the thought process at times, but not actually do the work for them And not necessarily be the expert, they can be the experts, that’s actually, okay and in fact, the fact that you aren’t proficient in necessarily what you’re teaching them is a good thing, because that means you are forced to basically keep your arms behind your back. So you can’t actually do the work for them so um. So i think i wanted to make that comment as well i’ll go back to our regular scheduled program um.
I did want to say something about my thoughts about making, and i think – and this was talked about a little bit earlier as well, which is that it is human nature to make – i mean ever since the dawn of civilization or dawn of humans. You know it has been about using making to solve problems to you know, be able to hunt food, but also to express yourself. You know cave paintings really started coming into light almost when tools started to come to light as well, and i think that basically shows this human nature to basically make and create not only for purposes of something you need to do because of things you want to Do – and i even see that my two-year-old, which is again something that i wouldn’t have realized, probably up until recently as i watched him grow, is he also makes himself – and i see such creativity in him – it’s amazing and to think that i probably had pieces that When i was a kid that got driven out of me by the standard educational mechanism um, but you know he’ll he’ll look at the dishwasher when he basically opens it up and he’s like. Oh choo choo, i’m like what the hell are you talking about and then he’s looking at the track and he says: oh, that’s like a train track and i’m like wow, that’s actually kind of correct, that’s amazing and he took his little. He has this little tower thing that he uses where he stands on, looks at and plays at the counter, and he basically took that he dragged it to the middle of the kitchen, and then he took two square bar stools that we have nearly kissed as well. He dragged those next to the tower and he said that’s my choo choo train and he literally melted he climbed on top of it. He was the conductor and he basically told mommy and daddy to go sit on top of the stools and basically and he would take the tickets – and i was just blown away by that because again it’s about creating it’s about making and if a two-year-old can do It i just think that we need to keep that energy going throughout their education, and the reason being in part is because i actually feel strongly that making is what actually feeds these technological revolutions that we have. I love this quote um from thomas carlyle.
He was a philosopher in the 1800s, a scottish philosopher, and it’s a long one but i’ll still say it. You know neither had watts of the steam engine a heroic origin, any kindred with the princes of this world. The princes of this world were shooting their cartridges, while this man with blackened fingers and grim brow was searching out in his workshop, the fire secret and that’s true. The first industrial revolution was made by these people, who didn’t come from a necessarily a formalized background, but rather actually sat and actually had the curiosity to try to invent and create things that were well beyond what they had.
Originally thought and same was true in the second industrial revolution, to think about the second electoral industrial revolution being about um electrification and about airplanes and mass manufacturing, and so on so forth. They were the edisons, the teslas, the wright brothers of the world that actually created those worlds, not necessarily what you think of ivory tower academics and the like um third industrial revolution. I think that’s the one that we’re all familiar with. We just lived through computer age information technology. Obviously you know dell hewlett and packard wozniak and jobs. These were all companies that were built in the garages, that’s what silicon valley was all about, and obviously that’s there, and i think you know as we’re going into the fourth industrial revolution. This is the one that we’re in we’re starting piece now this is about. You know 50 billion connected devices, everything that’s going to be smart, everything’s, going to be connected, everything’s going to be 3d printed out, but a lot of things will be 3d printed.
It’S about um. This world is going to basically be powered by the makers, and these are really the skills and proficiencies that you’re teaching your students about. That’S.
What’S going to make them successful and what makes me really excited about the fourth industrial revolution and what making has turned into now, which i’m really excited about is in the days of the first industrial revolution in the second and even the third um. The making was not necessarily accessible to everybody. It was very difficult to have a steel forge in order to try to really creep out to pull out the fire secret, but now wow we’re actually making making accessible.
So if you had a thousand people making – and you had these amazing innovations in the first second and third industrial revolution, now think about the fact that you can have hundreds of thousands and millions of people literally making in the fourth industrial revolution and that’s going to Make that fourth industrial revolution, just mind-boggling and amazing um see. I think this stuff is the stuff that just sounds stupid for me to say now, which is that it’s a very natural way to learn um, but for us, and why is it that you know these technology companies? Why do people like intel really care about that? And that’s because really that this is going to be the stepping stones? Um, it’s going to be this fourth industrial revolution: it’s going to be that kid that literally plays in his or her bedroom and tries things. That’S going to basically figure out to do things that i have never dreamed of, because no offense in a weird, crazy way. My innovative days are over kind of not really but um, but in reality it’s just it.
I have teams full of millennials and you know people in their early 20s and it’s amazing their thought process and what they think of, and my little boy looking at the dishwasher sees a train track um in that same way, these these makers that we’re actually educating Are going to come up with ideas that are just beyond what we can actually comprehend and it’s a comment upon us to give them not only the skills but also the tools to basically allow them to be the provision um to see their dreams come to life. So, that’s all that i wanted to say those probably shorter than 10 minutes, because i don’t ramble for too long but yeah. Thank you very much.
Everyone here, cuz .