InfiniD's Skyler Carr Featured in Marriott School of Business Online Magazine. Adults Succeed on the Space Center's Darmok Trials.The Imaginarium

Skyler Carr is a co-founder of InfiniD.  He's a hard working, dedicated entrepreneur working to take the concept of simulator based experiential learning inspired by my first simulator 'Voyager' to the world; no small task, right? Skyler was recently featured in an article from BYU's Marriott School of Business. Today I'd like to share an edited version of that article. 

Congratulations Skyler and thank you for what you're doing to change the very nature of education.

Mr. Williamson

INFINID'S SKYLER CARR FEATURED IN MARRIOTT SCHOOL OF BUSINESS ONLINE MAGAZINE

Skyler Carr grew up dreaming of traveling through space and hunting aliens. His favorite day in grade school included a trip to the Space Center in Pleasant Grove, where he could practice being a spaceman. He never forgot those days.

In 2013, Carr was a senior in the entrepreneurship program at the Marriott School when his friends came to him with the idea to take the Space Center concept to the world. After becoming involved, Carr wanted to also transformed the entire Space Center system into a software platform for experiential learning in schools around the country.

The Space Center concept of experiential education using simulator based learning was originally created in 1983 by elementary school science teacher Victor Williamson.  In 1990, Williamson founded the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center at Central School, Pleasant Grove. Schools and parents could book the site for birthday parties, field trips, and camps where kids could go on a spacecraft simulator and catch aliens.

While still in school, Carr realized evolving the space center concept  into a world wide organization would take more time and attention than he had thought. Carr had to rely on the support of professors, the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, and local entrepreneurs to get his feet on the ground before taking off with a whole new company.

“I accidentally started the company,” says Carr, who graduated in 2014. “It was more of a happenstance get-together where we had an idea for a fun program, but it took off because it was bigger than we thought.”

The newly developed company, now known as INFINI D Learning, has far greater reach than the original program due to the high accessibility of its software. Rather than having students come to the actual brick and mortar space education centers, the centers can reach students anytime, anywhere. Schools can access the software to use in computer labs for less than the cost of a field trip and can use it for the entire school year.

The learning software is prebuilt, animated, and curriculum-based, and can be applied to any subject. For example, students can learn about a math theory and test it in a lifelike space simulation the following week.

“The engagements that kids get in the classroom produce incredible results,” Carr says. “It’s expanded to be anything you can imagine, and it applies to every subject, even language arts and social studies.”

Carr didn’t produce such results without facing obstacles and challenges, and to this day he reaches out to mentors he met through the entrepreneurship program for ideas and solutions.

“Some major challenges are the fact that we’re doing something no one’s done before,” Carr says. “You can’t look up how to build a spaceship that’s accessible on all school technology in every state, so there are very specific people I can go to for mentoring in that area.”

He continues to use the resources he first discovered through the entrepreneurship program to find solutions to today’s challenges, and people he met at BYU still come to him with answers and support.

“My favorite thing is waking up every day having no idea how to solve a problem, and later ending up in the office with someone who will help me solve it by the end of the day,” he says.

Adult Crew Tackles the CMSEC's Darmok 

Trials

      A transporter accident left 4 command crew members of the USS Phoenix in a state where they were not able to return to fully active duty until at the earliest March. The Phoenix had been assigned to participate in the Darmok Trials and needed highly trained officers ages 17+ to take over their duties. Their ship departed at 4:00 pm on Saturday, December 10th and returned at 10:00 pm that evening. All went well.

     I'm always pleased to see adults at the Space Center, especially when I hear them reminisce about the great times they had attending our camps and field trips when they were kids. It is a testament to the dedicated work of so many good people, people who believed in the power of simulator based experiential education. 

     Congratulations to the staff and volunteers of the Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center on another successful camp.  They all make me very proud.  

Mr. W.         

The Imaginarium

The Farpoint Club's Cyber Legionnaires, Renaissance Academy's Saturday Morning Programmers. The Kremlin Trembles and the Chinese Cower Behind Their Firewall. Theater Imaginarium.

The Cyber Legionnaires at Renaissance Academy (notice the Roman banner) 

   
     What makes foreign governments question their future security? What keeps the Kremlin's spymasters up at night?  Why is China spending billions on new network firewalls? These governments, all guilty of meddling in American's cyber security, fear a small group of young, up and coming future programmers.They fear Renaissance Academy's Cyber Legionnaires.  
     Nestled snugly just to the south of the the tech memory giant IM Flash sits Renaissance Academy. Renaissance is a public charter school that specializes in foreign languages and experiential education using the USS Voyager, the school's starship simulator.  New to the school this year is the Saturday morning programming class offered free of charge to Renaissance students.  These thirty-one Cyber Legionnaires meet in my classroom most Saturday mornings from 8:00 - 9:30 A.M.  I volunteer my time to play host. I'm assisted by Alex, my right hand man and programming guru. Together we put the students through their paces as outlined in the Google CS curriculum.  
     Our young programming novices are learning SCRATCH. They're quick learners and keep both Alex and I busy.  

      

Each Cyber Legionnaire is working on a specific task. Some work in national security, others foreign surveillance, while others work on material so classified I shouldn't have mentioned it at all. 

     The curriculum comes from Google CS. Google has done an excellent job making the curriculum teacher friendly.  Each lesson has online videos and activities which work on any platform and any computer. We use Chromebooks.

Stephen is hard at work protecting the national electrical grid against foreign hacking.  His work is cleverly disguised as a story about a misunderstood rodent finding his way home. 

 Jack and Jason share a lighter moment as they review terabytes of code showing possible Russian influence in the last national election.

Young Loa found something quite disturbing in the code that safeguards the nuclear codes

Alex is reviewing the next section of code. The Cyber Legionnaires help each other. Above you see Noah helping Brandon with his code to protect the air traffic system.  A sticky note above the screen is the signal for help. A close examination of Brandon's screen would lead the uninformed to believe he was writing an innocent story about a an airplane that took a wrong turn, giving the passengers the ride of their lives.

     My job as host is to supervise, facilitate, monitor, encourage, and help with the coding when I can. Let me restate the fact that I'm grateful for my student gurus (the Google name for Google CS volunteers).  

     The students are enthusiastic to learn as proven by their willingness to return to school at 8:00 A.M. on a Saturday morning for a 90 minute class.  As the name of our group illustrates, our students know that the future depends on a computer literate population. Computer literacy should begin at an early age with age appropriate material.  Google has generously supplied the curriculum. It is now up to schools to make these lessons available to students nationwide.

     From this class of Cyber Legionnaires will come tomorrow's programmers tasked with America's safety along with the development of applications, processes, and equipment to improve our quality of life. Our ultimate goal is to provide America's companies with an ample pool of qualified employees ready to tackle the programming needs of the future. The time to prepare for that future is now.  

Mr. Williamson

The Imaginarium Theater

The best gifs of the week, assiduously edited for gentler audiences, minors, and the terminally offended.