NI keeps going to school

“School’s out for summer” is the name of a popular song of the 70s by Alice Cooper and kids would sing that as loud as they could every June. For National Instruments, school is never out as the virtual instrumentation company continues its push to educate future engineers.
“We are trying to improve the academic landscape to improve technological literacy,” said Ray Almgren, vice president of developer and academic relations for National Instruments during his keynote address today at NIWeek 07 in Austin, Texas.
“The same kids we are worrying about educating are also technologically advanced,” he said. “We need to take advantage of technology and use that to educate them.”
What Almgren said schools have to include hands on learning versus the traditional theory approach, which is part of NI's Kindergarten through Rocket Science program.
“We want to bring cool technology down from the universities to the high schools,” Almgren said.
Kids “are experts at computer games, they are ruthless; they know the technology.”
By using children’s fascination with things like computer games, ipods, cell phones, they can more easily learn, and then also enjoy, classes like math and science.
NI has been working with universities down to elementary schools for quite a few years now and they seem to be making some headway, but as they said, they cannot do it alone, more people have to take action within their own communities to improve math and science curriculums.
To point out how well kids can work out problems using a hands on approach, Almgren brought out 10-year-old Samuel Majors from Findlay, Ohio. Majors will be entering 5th grade next year and he already can program LabView to operate a train set.