It is hard to ignore the statistics on the number of hours most children spend in front of a television set or video game.  According to national survey conducted by the National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF), the average school-aged child spends 27 hours per week watching TV. This means that over the course of a year, children spend more time watching TV than they spend in school or participating in any other activity except sleep. This same study also reports that, 92% of children and adolescents aged 2-17 play video games and spend, on average, between 20-33 minutes a day playing video games. The amount of time spent playing video games varies by age, however; children gradually increase the average time spent on video games, starting from when they are as young as 2 years old, with a spike in, average time of more than an hour each day, in their preadolescent to teen years.

Why are parents allowing their children this amount of media time when it is proven to stunt intellectual growth? Why do children choose to spend so much time with television and video games? The bigger question is what would happen if our kids had another option, another way to spend their out-of-school time. What if they were encouraged to invest that time, rather than wasting it, in something with a guaranteed return, such as, their education and their future?

The need for Portland Wiz Kids programs is clear. School-sponsored technology education programs are severely limited if they exist at all. Driven by economics, most notably with the passage of state legislation limiting school funding, many schools have removed hands on science learning opportunities in order to spend more time teaching reading, writing, and math. Ironically, this is happening at a time when the need for technology-oriented skills is rapidly increasing.

At Portland Wiz Kids, we believe there is a big difference between playing a video game and making one yourself, watching a movie and creating one yourself, or playing with LEGOS and building a LEGO-based robot. These differences are at the heart of Portland Wiz Kids, whose focus is on creating excitement about science and technology among children. Through our unique constructivist approach, we engage kids in the creation of  technology-based projects, as a form of informal learning experiences. While not every experience in life provides a teachable moment, in order for informal learning to happen, the
experience must incorporate three key components to ensure kids are engaged and open to the learning of the moment.