Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The New Cool A Visionary Teacher His FIRST Robotics Team and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts by Neal B The New Cool. Can 31 high school seniors build a world-class robot – and help to fix public education? By Kate Vander Wiede. It’s the kind of story we want to get behind: a group of diverse high schoolers led by a tough but caring mentor, face a challenge for which none of them are prepared. As the disparate group becomes a team, putting in blood, sweat and tears, we cheer them on in their quest toward success. This is the kind of story author Neal Bascomb strives to tell in The New Cool: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts . Unfortunately, it’s a goal he fails to achieve. “The New Cool” introduces us to the D’Penguineers, a group of 31 high school seniors who attend the engineering academy at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, Calif. The book follows these students as, led by physics teacher Amir Abo-Shaeer, they work to create a robot for FIRST, a worldwide competition. Rivaling football in its number of screaming fans and dedicated participants, FIRST was dreamed up by the eclectic and brilliant millionaire Dean Kamen, whose eccentricities (his bedroom door is designed to look like a cupboard door, for instance, and he usually rides his helicopter to work) abound. Kamen is a man who wants to fix the big problems in our world. He worries that America’s preoccupation with celebrities and sports players instead of science and technology will leave us lagging in worldwide innovation. Kamen created FIRST to show the next generation of students that being smart is “the new cool” and to inspire them to follow a technical path. FIRST isn’t a show-and-tell kind of competition; it’s an all-out war. Robots, created all across the country during a six-week building period, come together in regional and national battles. In the end, one team and one robot triumphs over all others. If the D‘Penguineers win the world championship competition, or if they gain publicity, Amir might just be able to raise the $3 million he needs to construct a building for his growing academy. The stakes in this competition – for the D’Penguineers, for Amir, and for the country at large – seem high. The competition seems fierce. The robot challenge sometimes seems impossible. But as you read “The New Cool,” none of this excitement comes through. As we follow the process of creating a robot, the book drags, focusing little on the students themselves. For two pages, Bascomb describes how Amir teaches friction. For another two, he explains how students create sketches in computer-aided design program SolidWorks. We’re taught torque, the logic of coding, and how a lathe works. The first half of the book is filled with these dry topics while we’re left to wonder who exactly the D’Penguineers and Amir are. A few students do stand out. There’s Gabe, the talented-beyond-his-years programmer who loves theater and has a father diagnosed with leukemia. There's the robot’s eventual driver, Chase, who struggles with a learning disability and who has finally found a home in Amir’s program. And there’s Turk, the die-hard sports fan who hopes to become the team’s shooter in the FIRST competition. But you never hear enough from these students and you find yourself wishing Bascomb had asked harder questions: How does Gabe cope with his father’s illness and the responsibility of FIRST? How does it feel for Chase to deal with a learning disability while designing a robot? And what do they really think of their teacher, Amir, whom we never really understand? Equally frustrating is that we don’t get to know the 28 other students on the team who pop in and out with just a sentence or two of explanation. With so little connection to the students, it's hard to be impressed when the group ultimately comes together as a team. Bascomb originally intended to follow three FIRST teams for the book, but ultimately decided to tell just the D’Penguineer’s story. Nevertheless, he does pen two chapters about the other two teams, one of which is called 2Train. 2Train member Gabe Ruiz has a story begging to be told. He’s from the South Bronx, desperate to escape, and looking at FIRST as his ticket out. As the short chapter about Gabe comes to a close, it's hard not to think about how much better the book would have been if 2Train had been the focus. The pace of "The New Cool" picks up slightly at the regional and championship competitions as the D’Penguineers' hard work begins to pay off, but by then it's too late and too little. Despite the important message contained in “The New Cool” the book fails to resonate. There’s no question but that the kind of robots created in the FIRST competition are impressive. And there’s no denying that the students who make them learn invaluable lessons. Amir’s academy is the kind of solution that could fix public education; Kamen’s vision might save the nation. Which is why it’s such a shame that this book doesn't do any of it justice. Kate Vander Wiede is the managing editor of The South End News in Boston. The New Cool. The world’s #1 eTextbook reader for students. VitalSource is the leading provider of online textbooks and course materials. More than 15 million users have used our Bookshelf platform over the past year to improve their learning experience and outcomes. With anytime, anywhere access and built-in tools like highlighters, flashcards, and study groups, it’s easy to see why so many students are going digital with Bookshelf. titles available from more than 1,000 publishers. customer reviews with an average rating of 9.5. digital pages viewed over the past 12 months. institutions using Bookshelf across 241 countries. The New Cool A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts by Neal Bascomb and Publisher Crown. Save up to 80% by choosing the eTextbook option for ISBN: 9780307588913, 0307588912. The print version of this textbook is ISBN: 9780307588890, 0307588890. The New Cool A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts by Neal Bascomb and Publisher Crown. Save up to 80% by choosing the eTextbook option for ISBN: 9780307588913, 0307588912. The print version of this textbook is ISBN: 9780307588890, 0307588890. New Cool. That Monday afternoon, in high-school gyms across America, kids were battling for the only glory American culture seems to want to dispense to the young these days: sports glory. But at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California, in a gear-cluttered classroom, a different type of “cool” was brewing. A physics teacher with a dream – the first public high-school teacher ever to win a MacArthur Genius Award -- had rounded up a band of high-I.Q. students who wanted to put their technical know-how to work. If you asked these brainiacs what the stakes were that first week of their project, they’d have told you it was all about winning a robotics competition – building the ultimate robot and prevailing in a machine-to- machine contest in front of 25,000 screaming fans at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome. But for their mentor, Amir Abo-Shaeer, much more hung in the balance. The fact was, Amir had in mind a different vision for education, one based not on rote learning -- on absorbing facts and figures -- but on active creation. In his mind’s eye, he saw an even more robust academy within Dos Pueblos that would make science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) cool again, and he knew he was poised on the edge of making that dream a reality. All he needed to get the necessary funding was one flashy win – a triumph that would firmly put his Engineering Academy at Dos Pueblos on the map. He imagined that one day there would be a nation filled with such academies, and a new popular veneration for STEM – a “new cool” – that would return America to its former innovative glory. It was a dream shared by Dean Kamen, a modern-day inventing wizard – often-called “the Edison of his time” – who’d concocted the very same FIRST Robotics Competition that had lured the kids at Dos Pueblos. Kamen had created FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) nearly twenty years prior. And now, with a participant alumni base approaching a million strong, he felt that awareness was about to hit critical mass. But before the Dos Pueblos D’Penguineers could do their part in bringing a new cool to America, they’d have to vanquish an intimidating lineup of “super-teams”– high-school technology goliaths that hailed from engineering hot spots such as Silicon Valley, Massachusetts’ Route 128 technology corridor, and Michigan’s auto-design belt. Some of these teams were so good that winning wasn’t just hoped for every year, it was expected. In The New Cool, Neal Bascomb manages to make even those who know little about – or are vaguely suspicious of – technology care passionately about a team of kids questing after a different kind of glory. In these kids’ heartaches and headaches – and yes, high-five triumphs -- we glimpse the path not just to a new way of educating our youth but of honoring the crucial skills a society needs to prosper. A new cool. NEAL BASCOMB has published a number of international and national bestsellers, including Higher, The Perfect Mile, Red Mutiny and Hunting Eichmann. His books have been optioned for film, featured in several documentaries and translated in 10 languages. He has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. He and his wife and their two daughters make their home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Posts Tagged ‘A Visionary Teacher’ Called “a nail-biting thrill ride for techies and armchair engineers” by Kirkus Reviews, THE NEW COOL: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts (Crown; on sale March 1, 2011) by veteran journalist and bestselling author Neal Bascomb is the astonishing and inspiring story of a team of high school seniors and their mentor, who come together—not to exercise their athletic prowess but to build a machine that will compete in the most heated, sophisticated robotics competition in the world. The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, sponsored by genius inventor Dean Kamen in hopes of jump-starting American innovation for the next generation, has become a worldwide phenomenon—and regularly spurs students and teachers to accomplishments they never dreamed possible. Amir Abo-Shaeer, the remarkable teacher who leads this group of students, was recently awarded a MacArthur genius award (the first public high school teacher ever to receive this honor). THE NEW COOL chronicles the inspired efforts that Amir’s team, the Dos Pueblos D’Penguineers, puts into creating their robot—overcoming their lack of experience, resources, and time (not to mention the Bad News Bears quality of their team). Their success against the best of the best is an epic sports story, and it heralds a new kind of cool, one that rewards brains over brawn and just might usher in a new generation of innovators and leaders. THE NEW COOL is also a guide to what the future of education needs to be and how the United States can marshal its young in the fields of science, technology, math, and engineering. It is a crucial book for anyone concerned with the state of education in this country (most recently highlighted in Waiting for Superman ) and how we reignite the American economic engine. NEAL BASCOMB has published a number of international and national bestsellers, including The Perfect Mile and Hunting Eichmann. His books have been optioned for film, featured in several documentaries, and translated into ten languages. He has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Los Angeles Times. He and his wife and their two daughters make their home in Philadelphia. Visit Neal on the Web at www.nealbascomb.com. To learn more about the FIRST ® organization, please visit www.usfirst.org. ABOUT THE BOOK. THE NEW COOL: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts. By Neal Bascomb. Crown • Price: $25.00. On Sale: March 1, 2011 • ISBN 978-0-307-58889-0. For more information on the book and Neal Bascomb, please contact: Download Now! 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