A couple of recent visits to Silicon Valley helped me to better understand the place we often refer to as the tech hub of the U.S. or the world. I thought perhaps educators would like to inform their students about the Valley, it’s contribution to tech, and the lifestyles of people in the area. Geographically, Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California. It roughly includes the Santa Clara Valley which historically was very fertile and grew a lot of produce. This is a beautiful region of rolling hills with a moderate climate. The largest city in the area is San Jose. The valley is home to roughly 2M in smaller communities spread throughout. The main concentration of high rises is in San Francisco. People commute to work so a smog haze can be seen over the main thoroughfares. Outings can be to the sea shore for tide pooling or hiking in the hills. For intellectual stimulation you may want to visit the Exploratorium, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park or dozens of other museums, The GDP per capita is $128,308 with a total economic output of $275 billion. This video of Steve Wozniak shows the valley before it was Silicon Valley while also describing the value of passion as an entrepreneurial trait. The historic photos and videos of the founding of Apple are priceless.
This interactive map shows the geography and many of the companies in the region which include Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino; Stanford University in Palo Alto; Facebook in Menlo Park, Tesla in Freemont, ebay in San Jose, and Google in Mountain View. North in the Bay Area you will find Twitter, Uber, Lyft and others. The interactive map could be used by students to locate and research the companies as well as to learn about the founders and growth of the companies. After sharing their findings they can determine which company they would support if they were venture capitalists or if they were buying stocks. Perhaps students can see how many of this year’s most innovative companies selected by Fast Company are located in Silicon Valley or determine if there are other tech clusters around the globe. Locating local tech companies and understanding what they do would provide a local connection. The Startup Culture in the Classroom after school industry tours will feature One Stone and RevUnit this year. Watch this blog for opportunities to sign up.
While in Silicon Valley, our gracious host, my adopted Indian son Kumar, took us to visit the Computer History Museum which was interesting to me since many of the innovations unfolded during my lifetime as evidenced on this timeline. We learned about autonomous vehicles, hacking and the silicon revolution. Lesson plans on their website include words of advice from aspiring entrepreneurs including videos of learning and grit! A challenge for your students could be to discover which famous founder says confidence is most important? Or curiosity? Or failure or hustle? My personal observation about successful entrepreneurs is that they can’t learn fast enough. In some cases they left college because of this desire to learn at a faster pace and as needed to support their drive. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett take reading vacations – my new dream idea! Entrepreneurs seek knowledge and are able to recognize and make connections. A field trip to these museums and businesses would be ideal but alas, due to proximity we might need to borrow good ideas from their websites. The Tech Interactive museum website provides challenges and lessons on science, math, engineering and ELL – which says STEAM to me. If you are teaching social innovation, check out The Tech for Global Good Design Challenge as a dynamic way to promote creative problem-solving of real-world problems. An iterative and collaborative process is used to build innovator mindsets that are key to future success. If you look carefully, you may find the location of San Jose State University since the Hogs are playing them in football.
Please provide feedback on ways you use this information as well as the students interest in this type of knowledge.
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