Over the course of the year, I've talked with a good handful of kids that already had Disney Infinity at home who had no idea as to how Creativi-Toys worked. And once I explained some to them, they were very excited about it. A friend at work recently asked about signing up her daughters at our next Toy Box schedule at the library, when they already had Disney Infinity at home. I pointed her to the IBM ODC YouTube channel & explained that the in-game lab exercises are available directly from Disney's Community DB. She wants them to enjoy the structure of the class first, then see what they do with it. I can't argue with that, but with all of this feedback from kids who already own the console game, I've realized that I need to rewrite my Activity Kit! It needs to be able to accommodate educators forming a structured class, but also parents/kids who could do everything from home. I'm sure that there are plenty of young Toy Box builders starting out as a result of the new Hub, the variety of video tutorials from the community, and posts on these forums, but there is still an apparently large segment that still have no idea. And perhaps a freely available reference kit from IBM will help explain to parents & kids a little of that Toy Box Magic, of its great educational value, and how much FUN it is.
And on the flip side, I'm in discussions with two separate colleges interested in utilizing Toy Box Clubs as summer tech camps. They see the value in providing this creative Disney sandbox environment to elementary & middle school kids. They see the value in having their comp sci college students run the camp, perhaps even have Toy Box Clubs of their own. It's a cool way for a college to provide an educational camp to the surrounding community, to provide its comp sci students an opportunity at community service, and to showcase the facilities of its campus as the same time. Nothing finalized yet, but I'm very excited about this
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After all this time with all of these posts on the extended demographic of the Toy Box, I underestimated the demographic myself! Go figure
