In my own words · West Palm Beach, FL

Why I love technology

A wide-angle view of the flight control room of NASA's Mission Control Center, filled with rows of consoles and display screens. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Technology" page — read by families in West Palm Beach, FL. — A wide-angle view of the flight control room of NASA's Mission Control Center, filled with rows of consoles and display screens. NASA · Public domain

Someone made this. That means I could make one too.
Every button was a choice a person made.
When it breaks, there is a reason. I can find the reason.

You can love technology in West Palm Beach.

What it really is

Technology is a tool somebody built on purpose to solve a problem.

Three things to try today

Pick one thing in your house and ask what problem it solves.
Find the part that would break first.
Draw a better version.

Technicians in white clean-room 'bunny suits' begin work on the Dawn spacecraft inside a payload processing clean room. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Technology" page — read by families in West Palm Beach, FL. — Technicians in white clean-room 'bunny suits' begin work on the Dawn spacecraft inside a payload processing clean room. NASA · Public domain

For the grown-up reading this

Nobody has to talk a child into liking technology. They have to not talk them out of it. West Palm Beach is one of the cities the Miami–Fort Lauderdale–West Palm Beach, FL metro area is officially named after.

Teach the machine as a made thing, not a magic thing. Made things can be understood.

If the kid who loves this is a girl

Read what one popular teacher said to one little girl who took out the classroom trash without being asked — and what that girl did with the rest of her life.

Girls are great at math — West Palm Beach, FL →