Founded in the winter of 2009 by Alec Resnick, Michael Nagle, and Shaunalynn Duffy, sprout & co. is a "community education and research organization devoted to creating and supporting the community-driven learning, teaching and investigation of science." The trio came out of the rigorous learning environment of MIT with a sense that education at the community level could ignite future generations of scientists and researchers.

Image courtesy of sprout & co.

However, the form this community education should take has not always been clear. sprout has gone through a series of iterations over the past few years, starting as a "public design firm" that worked on projects that the trio "felt had an educational angle even if the people [they] were working with didn't think of it that way." One such project was working with Somerville, MA-based Green City Growers to develop sensors to monitor the raised-bed gardens the company built. "Our interest in it," says Alec Resnick, was that "gardens struck us as a very community-driven laboratory that nobody thinks of as a laboratory full of very rich opportunities for investigation." Although sprout saw the opportunity for leveraging the gardens as an educational opportunity, the client did not share the same enthusiasm.

The next iteration of sprout saw Resnick, Nagle, and Duffy teaching programs to children about creative math, puzzles, and building things. "We were working out of libraries and coffee shops," says Resnick. "The programs we were running were either happening on campus or in local schools." Soon the need for a permanent home base became apparent.

Image courtesy of sprout & co.

Located in a residential neighborhood outside of Davis Square, the latest version of sprout consists of a wide range of workshops taught by volunteers, open "office hours," and weekly project nights. Examples of workshops include: Locksport: Basic Lockpicking, Fluid Mechanics, Mechanical & Kinetic Sculpture, and Engineering the Wind: Design and Build Your Own Wind Turbine. sprout also recently ran a workshop in conjunction with Nervous System, teaching how to use simulations of natural phenomena to create beautiful jewelry.

The office hours, which "turn out to be most of the time," are open to the public for consultation on any type of project. "We benefit a lot from having cool people and cool projects come through the space," says Resnick. "For us it's mostly like a sandbox to prototype projects and programs in."

Image courtesy of sprout & co.

Image courtesy of sprout & co.

Now, though, the community of garage inventors and backyard scientists are helping to teach sprout's educational programs. "I think most compelling learning experiences don't necessarily happen in an environment where the teacher knows everything," says Resnick. "We try to run programs and design programs which are going to have some aspect of discovery for both the coordinator and the participants...we're interested in building a more consistent community of people who are investigating questions that they care about and doing research of some form."

Image courtesy of sprout & co.

At the end of the day, sprout is about channeling the energy from the current generation of innovators, seen in success stories like Kickstarter or Google, and using it to change the future of education. "We think there's an opportunity for a start-up educational environment the way that there once was for an agile technology or software start-up," says Resnick. "A lot of the structural changes that made Google possible when Microsoft was still in the lead make possible a whole field of new ways for thinking about learning."

Image courtesy of sprout & co.

But what does this mean for science? The very word connotes staid white lab coats and test tubes, very different from the IDEO model for innovation: plaid shirts and sticky notes. Perhaps Resnick sums it up best:

"We talked about trying to make science more of a cultural activity, more the way that people react to music. Everyone in this coffee shop has some relation to music, whether it's a favorite song or being in a band or collecting vinyl. Whereas with science, there's a much sparser landscape of ways in which people relate to it. They hate it in school and never want to hear about it again, they might read Scientific American now but they don't have a chance to do science, or they might do it professionally...In our ideal world, the tools that we have available [in the sprout workshop] would be as easily available as free Wi-Fi."

Image courtesy of sprout & co.

This certainly harkens back to the glory days of the 1950's and 60's, when science was the motivation for millions of school-age children who experimented in their backyards. With the rise of the Internet, we also saw the rise of the YouTube musician; now everyone could be a rock star or a rapper. What sprout and a variety of other educational innovators offer is insight into what the YouTube for science could very well be.

sprout's Alec Resnick