Hacker Class: A Story of STEM Inspiration (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781737817109)

Alyssa can't wait for next year's sixth grade STEM class. But she's even more excited to tell her Uncle Mikey all about it.

Uncle Mikey calls himself a "hacker". But he doesn't crack passwords or break into video games. Uncle Mikey is an engineer at NASA designing the next Mars Rover.

Uncle Mikey, the "hacker", guides Alyssa through STEM class, teaching her how to think like a NASA engineer. She learns "hacking" can also be about creating. She learns it can be about trusting herself to figure things out. She learns it can be about expecting to mess up.

As Alyssa learns how to think, she creates her own Maker Space in her head. She starts to think like a NASA engineer. A different type of "hacker".

The goal of this book is to use a fun story to teach elementary grade students interested in STEM how to improve their problem solving skills.

The book is meant to encourage the positive traits of the "hacker" culture; focusing on persistence, creativity, self-trust, and a growth mindset. This book aims to teach thinking patterns that help work through the frustration of complex STEM projects, and hopefully come out the other side a bit wiser.

The author graduated from Texas A&M University and has fifteen years of experience as a software engineer for NASA missions, military aircraft avionics, and new generations of medical devices. He lives in San Antonio, TX with his wife and three children, a fish, a dog who sometimes listens, and piles of electronics he won't give away.

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