Long before President Obama came on the scene it was clear that America needed change.  Focused on shifting the infrastructure of our educational system, NT Etuk, CEO and founder of Dimension U, is set to shift the perspective of how kids learn by putting students first and bringing fun into the classroom through his educational video game series. A key part of his approach is DU the Math, a five-week national scholarship tournament that engages kids (grades 3-9) and encourages math competence through game play. BlackEnterprise.com got a chance to speak with Etuk to learn how his groundbreaking idea evolved and why he’s so passionate about getting kids interested in STEM at an early age.
How did the idea of fusing video games and education come to life?
I was a volunteer student for the Big Brothers & Big Sisters program [and] my little brother, Darien; his mother wanted me to teach him algebra. He’s a sharp kid that was bursting with intelligence, passion and very enthusiastic about everything he was interested, which was not algebra. So I sat down with him and the challenge that we faced was he was going into the 9th grade and I was [trying to] teach him X + 5 = Y. The problem was he could not remember what 9 X 4 was. I was like, Wow, I have to get you up on basically 3rd to 8th grade in two months, otherwise I am afraid of what is going to happen so we began buckling down and started hitting the lessons.
I studied math in college, and it is not easy and in the process of teaching him, I completely lost him. We were actually getting better, and he was improving but I had made some of the fundamental mistakes I think that many of the teachers make in the education system, which is that it is so focused on the outcome of scores that there is so little time to be creative, that they take all of the fun out of the process. So after two months he fired me, he went to his mom and asked her for me to stop teaching him.
That was sort of the epiphany and the awareness, that there is a whole generation of kids that are being lost in the education system because of the way they process information, the way that get engaged in anything whether it is social networking, instant messaging, email, video games, texting friends constantly, etc. The way that they process and use this information, none of this comes into the classroom. So now you end up with this schizophrenic society of kids where they are in control of everything on the outside, they go into class room, and it is now, “you sit here, you speak when I tell you to speak, etc.†and then the student gets turned off by these notions. The idea behind the company was to solve that problem.
What were some of the hurdles you faced getting the program off the ground?
The vast majority of education systems around the world ask the question, “What do we have to do to give every child who wants one a great education?â€Â This is a supply side question, where the supply is the number of teachers, number of schools, amount of funding, etc. We are flipping the question. We ask, “How do we get every child to ask for a great education?â€Â This is a fundamentally different approach, a paradigm shift, that allows for a completely different set of solutions. As we make this work, we are literally changing the paradigm for education around the world. But, as with anything completely new to the world, we have faced our challenges with funding, with acceptance of the idea, with educators who are concerned with letting go of control, with adults who have a negative perception of videogames in general.
For the skeptics, can you explain how do you make video games an educational tool?
When I was 11 in Nigeria, there was not a lot to do; I taught myself six programming languages because I thought it was fun. I grew up on adventure games, like Zork, during the Commodore 64 and Atari days. What I really learned from programming video games and playing them, was that video games are among the greatest teaching tools ever created and
we don’t typically think of them like that. The way that it works is that if you watch a kid who picks up a new video game, they have no idea of how to get through it from the character’s capabilities, the world, the tools, or the logic. Kids faced with a problem to complete the game go 10 minutes in, they fail, restart it again, go 20 minutes and fail, restart again until they master the game. But the first thing that they do when they run into a problem in the classroom is they raise their hand. Classrooms seem to be getting rid of the motivation for kids to actually power all the way through.So as of a result of that, we said let’s bring a bit of what is going on in video games to veer on the classroom that’s been the inspiration really. Seeing and understanding it, which is all psychology. The fundamental psychology behind the video game is the idea that you actually are not motivated to solve this problem until you get there. That [idea] is what we have reversed in schools. For example, they are teaching kids coordinates systems, which is an abstract concept that sits in a text book, and students have no idea if they are ever going to use it in real-life versus telling students, “Imagine you’re at 14th Street and 3rd Avenue and I want you to use the coordinal system map to figure out how to get to Central Park.” Now that is a mathematical abstract way to challenge students.
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How important is STEM education for the next generation in general?
[It is] absolutely critical. The world is moving more and more towards service-oriented societies grounded in technology. Mathematics, science and a basic understanding of technology will be critical to function in higher paying jobs in future.
What are your thoughts on the importance of getting children of color in the conversation of Dimension U?
I think this is important. A well-known study showed that African American children play videogames about 50% more than White children. Hispanics played approximately 70% more than White children did. If that’s the
case then we have a ready-made mechanism for engaging with children of color in videogames. So perhaps educational videogames can be used to engage students into a deeper relationship with education. We think it’s imperative to get great education solutions into the hands of every kid. That’s why our basic game system is free. Our kids and schools in urban areas can access the games at any time, free of charge.What are the specifics of the DU the Math tournament this summer?
DU the Math, which is a partnership between Dimension U and Lady Gaga’s business manager, Troy Carter, is a tournament that ends on June 16th we call the web 2.0 version of the national spelling bee but for math, so you get the software free of charge and you jump in and play. Our goal is for kids to do 50 million minutes of math. We want students and their schools to become engaged with mathematics. The grand prize is a concert with [recording artists] Mindless Behavior and Grace of Chance for the school that plays the most minutes. The winning school will also host the U games finals, which is a blast, so in between the games played the acts will perform. The idea is to get them in the suspense to get excited for math.
What advice do you have for future young entrepreneurs in the tech industry?
Here is my first piece of advice, and part of it is a cliché: follow your passion but first identify your passion. Many people do not think about what they really love, what wakes them up and motivates them. Now when they do find out, and then say, Well, I can’t make money out of it. For example, someone who loves to travel might think they can’t make money off that. This is actually not true there are actual components that that person can uncover to discover how it all can unfold. So by identifying what gets you excited based off, “I love to travel to new places to meet new people,†then that might tell you that person should be in public relations. So really do start with your passion and think deeply, because I can tell you everything I’ve been through, the ups the downs, if you do not have that core then things will become difficult.
The second piece of advice, I spoke at the Black men’s forum at Harvard, there were some students there from the community and there was this one high school student that was great and she asked me, “When should I start? I know that I want to go to college but I have ideas now.†My professor did a study on entrepreneurs and actually looked at who was successful with their businesses and went back to find that one variable was consistent. The variable that he found was actually, the thing that determined you actual success as an entrepreneur, was the number of times you started a business. It is like everything else is practice.
For me I call this my second generation of my company because, the first was Tabula Digital. It is never too late to start thinking and creating. Why Diddy was successful by the time he was 29 years old was because he started at the age of 17. Start early and base it on something that means something to you and the last component is bring people around you that are positive. I recommend the book is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. There is another version re-written by Dennis Kembro as Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice. I read the original, and it explains the mastermind alliance, which is about the people who you bring in that are dedicated to your success and you are to theirs. Get rid of the negatives and build a network of people who are out there speaking for you, selling for you and getting your word out. When you achieve this–even if you do not know math–you will soon need an accountant.