The engineers and educators at Mand Labs have a high concept vision - they want to change the world by turning children into creators of technology instead of consumers of technology. They believe that treating prototyping as a skill and teaching that skill to novice makers can help to achieve that goal. Treating components as building blocks, understanding the electrical concepts behind the components, debugging, and refining a system are the steps they hope to bring to makers with their new KIT-1, currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.
KIT-1 contains the components and curriculum for users to make sixty different projects, starting with the fundamentals of electricity and moving to motors, transistors, and sensors. Starting with charge, current, and resistance the topics then move to components. Potentiometers, diodes, switches, motors, and infrared LEDs all come into play as tools to teach concepts of digital logic gates, the Esaki Effect, and H-bridges. Most of the projects revolve around a breadboard and wiring the pieces together, before the app-driven lessons teach about the concepts and equations for a deeper understanding.
A smaller Magic of LED Kit is also offered, with five projects and a mini breadboard. Glowing an LED, Beeping a Buzzer, Flash Light from Capacitor, Touch-Activated Switch, and Automatic Night Lamp are the projects in the LED kit. The KIT-1 looks like a great learning tool that teaches prototyping and electronics but stands out because of the electrical engineering fundamentals that are taught to users. As engineers we all know these skills are more important than ever, but the campaign page offers some grim statistics. Thirty eight percent of STEM major students drop out of their major in the first year of college, fifty two percent of high schools in New York City do not offer physics classes, and almost one third of high school physics teachers have taken less than three college physics classes. Let's hope that the KIT-1 and tools like it can build interest and competency in the engineering skills we need. Twelve hundred kits are completed and ready to ship by Christmas, but this crowdfunding campaign is set up to fund the next ten thousand kits. The campaign ends on December 6, 2018.