Educators, technologists, and politicians all worry about the future of the American student.  Less and less American college students are interested in math and science while their international peers are excelling in those critical fields.  Fostering a generation of thinkers, tinkerers, inventors, scientists, and medical innovators is as important to national security as any national defense budget.  So as we struggle to figure out how to get kids more interested in math and science, some clever people are already creating solutions.  The key to fostering key critical thinking skills and a properly wired brain is START EARLY.  It’s no secret that childhood stimulation is key to brain development.

Behold a recently funded kickstarter project called ATOMS, “ATOMS are a system of plug-n-play sensors, motors, and logic blocks for kids and adults to make things that can do amazing thing.”  Not THIS is how you inspire the engineer and scientist of the future, make learning fun, cool, and challenging.  Read more.

What’s more you can control and interact with your creations via any IOS device.  Talk about cool and innovative!  You can also attach the ATOM bricks to existing toys, legos or virtually anything.

To highlight the claims I made earlier: A report in 2012 by Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance found that US students aren’t progressing to catch up to their foreign peers. See the infographic below, the USA ranks 31st and 23rd in Math and Science respectively even with a the 2nd highest starting teacher salaries in the world. You can read the entire story here.

Don’t you wish you had some of these to blow up you Lego Deathstar when you were a kid?  I sure do.  It’s projects like these that will inspire the next generation of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians.  Perhaps, even save the country.