SparkFun National Tour Kickstarter
SparkFun launches a Kickstarter to fund a national tour teaching embedded electronics.
One thing SparkFun has realized over the last few years is that when it comes to embedded electronics, the earlier you start learning, the better. We marvel to think about the question, "What if we had learned about some of this stuff in 6th grade, instead of in college (or beyond)?" That question led us to create our Department of Education and, now, we want to take it to the next step. Which is why we would like to announce the SparkFun National Tour Kickstarter.
Kickstarter is an amazing crowd-funding website and the SparkFun National Tour is our way of harnessing the power of Kickstarter to bring electronics education to teachers, afterschool programmers, librarians, and other educators across the country. We want to help bring the "A-ha! moment" of DIY electronics to kids all over the U.S.
Our goal is to travel to all 50 states (yes, Alaska and Hawaii too!) bringing along a team of highly-skilled instructors and a SparkFun Inventor's Kit labpack. At each stop, we will "train the trainers" on how to teach the SIK in their own classroom/library/afterschool program and they will keep the SIK labpack for use with their students.
This is a campaign we are extremely excited about. The funding goal of our Kickstarter is $150,000 - an amount which would enable us to make a stop at every state. If we exceed that goal? We'll add more stops, rent an extra RV if necessary, and train additional workers on teaching the SIK.
For more details on the backing levels or to make a donation, please visit our Kickstarter page. Briefly, at the $75 backing level you will receive a Learn to Solder: Simon Says Kit and at the $150 backing level you will receive a special Kickstarter Edition of the SparkFun Inventor's Kit (plus help fund our tour!). We hope you join us in making electronics part of the classroom! As always, please feel free to leave any questions in the comments section below.
Lastly, we will be closed Thursday (the 22nd) and Friday (the 23rd) this week for Thanksgiving. But don't forget about free shipping on Cyber Monday!
