{"id":4084,"date":"2017-06-23T05:40:06","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T10:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=4084"},"modified":"2020-07-25T18:57:30","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T23:57:30","slug":"mourning-bob-tinker-the-thomas-edison-of-s-t-e-m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stager.tv\/?p=4084","title":{"rendered":"Mourning Bob Tinker, The Thomas Edison of S.T.E.M."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bob Tinker at CMK 2008<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The world lost a remarkable educator on June 22, 2017 when Dr. Robert Tinker passed away at the age of 75.<\/p>\n

If your students have ever worked on a collaborative online project, taken a virtual class, used a science probe, played The Zoombinis, or used any terrific materials\u00a0created by TERC or The Concord Consortium, Bob is the reason why.<\/p>\n

A gifted scientist, Bob was brilliant, kind, patient, joyous, and generous. Like our mutual friend, Seymour Papert<\/a>, Bob spent his life helping others to learn and\u00a0love science and math just as much as he did. He possessed the rare empathy that allowed him to wonder why others might not learn this or that as naturally or easily as he did. Rather than blame or shame learners, Bob designed tools not to teach, but for learning. At Seymour Papert’s memorial celebration, Tod Machover quoted Papert as saying, “Everyone needs a prosthetic.” Bob Tinker was in the business of creating remarkable prosthetics useful for embracing the wonders of scientific inquiry.<\/p>\n

I just\u00a0learned that Bob fought on the front lines of the civil rights movement in Alabama, just as Papert did in South Africa. This news came as no surprise.<\/p>\n

“My Dad was the probably the smartest man I knew (MIT PhD), and he decided to pass on earning a big salary with a Defense Contractor in order to positively impact change. With my mom at his side, during the civil rights movement they moved to the South to teach at a University that could hardly afford textbooks. They marched in dangerous areas. They worked to expose climate change. They personally funded the arts and those less fortunate. They then built the two largest science\/match educational non-profits in the USA. The two NGOs employ hundreds, have trained thousands of teachers, and have educated millions of kids.” (Bob’s daughter,\u00a0Facebook, June 22<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A life well lived… Online, Bob’s\u00a0friends remember him as a mensch.<\/p>\n

Long before politicians and hucksters began alarming the citizenry about the need to teach Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S.T.E.M.)\u00a0subjects as a vulgar ticket to careers, real or imagined, Bob Tinker created tools and technology that not only raised the standards for student participation in\u00a0those fields, but did so in a progressive constructivist context. Not only didn’t his approach to S.T.E.M. exceed empty rhetoric and vocabulary acquisition,\u00a0Bob’s work brought a broad spectrum of modern scientific domains to life in classrooms. Biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, earth science, electronics, engineering, and computational thinking were all in the mix.<\/p>\n

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Dr. Tinker delighting in a teacher’s scientific discovery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One could make a compelling argument that Bob Tinker is the father of S.T.E.M. However, I think of him as the Thomas Edison of S.T.E.M. Beyond his\u00a0remarkable\u00a0academic preparation, Bob was not resigned to a life of writing pretentious papers to be published in overpriced conference proceedings read by\u00a0six colleagues. While there was nobody better at writing successful grant proposals, Bob and his colleagues had a stunning track record of “commercializing”\u00a0their ideas. At both TERC, where he was Director of Educational Technology and The Concord Consortium he founded, Bob Tinker personified Edison’s\u00a0notion of research AND development. An idea could be tested, refined, manufactured, and distributed in a reasonable timeframe. Unlike so many researchers\u00a0cloistered in university departments and think tanks, Bob and his colleagues turned ideas into actual products enjoyed by millions of students around the\u00a0world. Like Edison, Dr. Tinker didn’t work alone. He assembled and led an incredibly competent band\u00a0of “muckers<\/a>” who could bring impossible ideas to life.<\/p>\n

Those products were sound, timely, reliable, open-ended, fun\u00a0and teachable\u00a0without succumbing to “teacher proofing” or dumbing down the science. There\u00a0was never anything condescending about Dr. Tinker’s prolific work. Bob’s considerable charm and passion undoubtedly played a role in the creation of\u00a0public\/private partnerships, including with The National Geographic and Broderbund, required to successfully distribute his inventions to classrooms and\u00a0homes everywhere. Bob was also a pioneer in making powerful software tools freely available online. He also preceded the DIY ethos of the maker movement by advocating for the creation of one’s own science\u00a0probes<\/a>\u00a0in 2007!<\/p>\n

In Bob’s world, there was no reason to add an A for Arts to S.T.E.M., since the\u00a0doing\u00a0of science and mathematics was itself, beautiful, wondrous, playful,\u00a0creative, and relevant. Papert and Tinker shared a desire for children to be mathematicians and scientists, rather than being taught math or science. They\u00a0both worked to make complexity possible by making the frontiers of mathematics and science accessible and usable by children. Bob went a step further and\u00a0created programs where students could collaborate with scientists online as colleagues back in 1989, two years before the World Wide Web was released to\u00a0the public. My fourth grade class participated in the\u00a0National Geographic Kids Network Acid Rain\u00a0<\/em>project back in 1990.<\/p>\n

In an interview<\/a> Bob said:<\/p>\n

\u201cI became inspired to teach by tutoring two kids for two years in a black college in the South. It was the best education (for me!) anyone could design because it showed me exactly how science education could reach far more learners. I\u2019ve dedicated my life to realizing that dream and it\u2019s been wonderful working with smart people who share that dedication. There\u2019s always been a sense of mission. We make important advances that will affect kids all over the world and\u2014this was my initial motivation\u2014bring cutting-edge educational resources to under-resourced kids.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On a personal note<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do not remember exactly when I first met Bob Tinker, but it was at a conference approximately thirty years ago. Back then, the smartest people in the world\u00a0spoke at educational computing conferences. I was familiar with his work prior to meeting him. In fact, I was a big fan of The Science Toolkit<\/em>, distributed by\u00a0home recreational software publisher, Broderbund. The Science Toolkit<\/em> was a low-cost ($79 master module with two probes and $39 add-on sets) software\u00a0package\u00a0with\u00a0external sensors that plugged into the joystick port of a microcomputer to allow children to conduct, measure, and record science experiments\u00a0at home. This was an example of what Bob pioneered and called Micro-Based Labs (MBL).<\/p>\n

Check out the video clip from the Christmas 1983 episode of the\u00a0PBS show\u00a0Computer Chronicles<\/em>. Note how clean and simple the software it is and compare it some of the probeware software sold to schools today.<\/p>\n