Stacy Gibson's Blog: unprojects-blog: Cool idea! diy: Introducing DIY We started...

Cool idea!

diy:

Introducing DIY

We started building DIY a few months ago and now we’re sharing the first thing we’ve made. This is a company that we hope to spend decades crafting, but it’s important for us to build it out in the open, bit by bit, to encourage our community of kids and parents to share feedback with us continuously. From Zach’s experience making Vimeo, we understand that this sort of culture fosters collaboration and admiration between a company and its community, and ultimately leads to something that is loved.

Our ambition is for DIY to be first app and community in every kid’s life. It’s what we wish we had when we were young, and what we’ll give to our kids. Today we’re releasing a portfolio tool to let kids collect everything they make as they grow up.

We’ve all seen how kids can be like little MacGyvers. They’re able to take anything apart, recycle what you’ve thrown away – or if they’re Caine, build their own cardboard arcade. This is play, but it’s also creativity and it’s a valuable skill. Our idea is to encourage it by giving kids a place online to show it off, so family, friends and grandparents can see it and easily respond. Recognition makes a kid feel great, and motivates them to keep going. We want them to keep making, and by doing so learn new skills, use technology constructively, begin a lifelong adventure of curiosity, and hopefully spend time offline, too.

We’re looking to you parents as partners to make it all work. It used to be that you hang your kids’ work on the fridge to let them know you’re proud. Now the Web is becoming a part of their life at home and school — and there’s a new opportunity to connect you to their creations and cheer them on.

“Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.”
- Sir Ken Robinson

When you get your kid to join DIY early, you’re helping to recognize creativity as an essential part of every kid’s education, and possibly a requirement for their satisfaction as an adult. Sadly, most adults don’t believe they’re creative although we’re all capable of it at any age! We believe that to accept yourself as a creative adult you must start as a kid who is fearless of learning new skills and doing it yourself. Encouraging your kids to be inventive and self-reliant now will better prepare them to participate in a world that keeps changing.

Here’s how it works today:

DIY kids sign up and get their own Portfolio, a public web page to show off what they make.

They upload pictures of their projects using diy.org or our iOS app.

Kids’ projects are online for everyone to see, you can add Stickers to show support.

You also have your own dashboard to follow their activity and to make sure they’re not sharing anything that should be private.

Kids are ready for this. They’re instinctively scientists and explorers. They’re quick to build using anything at their disposal. They transform their amazement of the world into games. They’re often drawn to learning that’s indistinguishable from play (think about bug collecting!). And, most important, they embrace technology.

We’re grateful for your help to make this company, and grow the next — hopefully larger — generation of creative kids.

- Zach Klein, Isaiah Saxon, Andrew Sliwinski, Daren Rabinovitch
(and Dave, Brian, Mike, Courtney, David, Lucas, Shawn, and Sean!)

PS. See our Parents page for more information. Or you can follow @DIY to see important updates.