Encouraging Schoolkids to Speedcube

[lizb]

Hi everyone, my son is 14 and has been speedcubing for a year and a half, just challenging himself to get faster. He moved from an ordinary cube up to a standard speed cube last winter. He's tried to get classmates interested so he can compete with his friends, but no one really seems to want to put in the effort. They twist the cube around a bit but not seriously!

How can we encourage other schoolkids to do this as well? Anyone tried to set up a club? Or beginners competition? How did you do it? Did the kids stick with it? Please give me your ideas; it would be great to get something local going, but I'm not sure how.



Thank you in advance, anyone who takes the time to send me some ideas and the benefits of your experience!

lizb

 

[lizb]

I think they all prefer skateboarding or waveboarding! We live in Germany and he's the only one in his class of 35 who does it. It's like it's not all that up to date or something. How did you plan to make the club? How often meeting, how to encourage each other to get better... thanks for your help.

 

[lizb]

ok, I've done it and I think it was successful.

 

[collinbxyz]

I just had my best friend over my house one day, and I convinced him to let me teach him. After about a week, and lot's of writing algorithms on paper, he finally finished learning, and soon got a speedcube, than even went into two competitions!

 

[collinbxyz]

ok, I've done it and I think it was successful.

Yep, it was. Thanks@

 

[lizb]

Hi, I've gotten rid of the reference to (pe). I hope it's ok now. I didn't realise this was spam. That might sound stupid, but I'm a rather old person with not much experience of forums. In fact, it took quite a while to work out how to post a thread. My question is totally genuine. My son has asked my advice on how to get other kids interested. I found to link to your site through that funny online shop. I have to say 'thank you' to them for introducing me to you guys! And 'sorry' to you guys for promoting. I didn't realise it was wrong. Please accept my apology.

 

[lizb]

that sounds good. How did he find out where the competitions were or were they in your school? How would you go about setting up a competition between kids? do you need special equipment or does it work informally with a watch?

 

[sa11297]

st my school i have gotten many kids involved. at first i wasnt trying to do so; I just wanted extra time to practice. Very quickly others got interested and I sold a few cubes. They told there friend which told there friends and I have sold dozens of puzzles. A few of them have learned how to solve the cube under 30 seconds. Just in summer school which ended last week, I sold three 3x3s (all on the last day). Summer school lasts 3 weeks and there are only 11 days. I brought my cube starting about halfway through summer school; they got interested very quickly.

 

[Vinny]

Well to your son, he can't really make other children take interest. I know I can't really do that. When one of my friend's shows interest and asks me to help them or teach them, those are the kind of people that want to learn how to solve a cube. I'm not surprised he's the only one in his school who does it: I was the only kid in my school until I taught some friends. Speedcubing isn't really a common hobby at all.

 

[choza244]

maybe you can show them videos of world records or just people that are fast solving the cube, or different puzzles etc.

But I think that is really hard to keep other people interested, for example when I was averaging like 30 seconds all my friends wanted to learn how to solve it and everyone got a cube and started practicing... 1 week later all were bored of the cube LOL, only 1 of them kept practicing till he got sub 1 min, but then he stopped.

Of you can do a local competition I think that will help a lot.

 

[lizb]

1 week later all were bored of the cube

that's exactly what happened!

 

[sa11297]

i am quite obsessed with cubing and how i got into it sounds like that wouldnt happen. I first saw someone with cube and solving it, so I wanted to know how to solve also. (typical) Then I learned how to solve it and had interest. (still very typical) After that, I could solve it in around a minute. I didnt really know about speedsolving or anything, so there was nothing more to do with it (at least thats what I thought) so I got bored. (typical) I didnt touch the cube again for at least a year (typical) when finally I picked it up and tried to solve it, I coudlnt. I had forgotten an algorithm (typical). So instead of leaving it there, I looked online again to relearn and by chance I found speedsolving and fast cubers. (not typical) Now I have stuck with it.

EDIT: I expacted people to get bored, so I sent them videos of WRs and showed them weird puzzles. I also showed them tonyfisher's site: http://tonyfisherpuzzles.net/

For some of the kids that liked math and were interested in how it worked, I should them some cool stuff like if you repeat a move enough times it will cancel out. I stold them that there were 43 quintillion permutations which interested them.

 

[collinbxyz]

i am quite obsessed with cubing and how i got into it sounds like that wouldnt happen. I first saw someone with cube and solving it, so I wanted to know how to solve also. (typical) Then I learned how to solve it and had interest. (still very typical) After that, I could solve it in around a minute. I didnt really know about speedsolving or anything, so there was nothing more to do with it (at least thats what I thought) so I got bored. (typical) I didnt touch the cube again for at least a year (typical) when finally I picked it up and tried to solve it, I coudlnt. I had forgotten an algorithm (typical). So instead of leaving it there, I looked online again to relearn and by chance I found speedsolving and fast cubers. (not typical) Now I have stuck with it.

This is ALMOST exactly my story. That's everything except that I learned when I was 9, didn't know about speedcubing, stopped for two years, etc. Everything else is the same. =D

This is a competition in Germany in November, although I'm not sure how far away it is. I think it's definitely enough time for him to teach some other kids, and have them go to it too.

http://worldcubeassociation.org/results/c.php?i=MunichOpen2011

 

[choza244]

1 week later all were bored of the cube

that's exactly what happened!

Yes, that's why this is not a very common hobby. Your son is the only one in the school, I'm the only one in my entire city!!

And you can tell your son to join this forum, he will keep motivated and maybe he can make some friends and compete online if that's what he want, or just keep practicing and take him to an official competition. For example I joined the forum on 2008 because I wanted to start learning how to solve it fast, but in my country the good cubes were so expensive that everytime I wanted to buy a cube I spent the money in other things, so I got a cube good cube in 2010 and started learning the beginner method, and then started reading about all the different dicussions here in the forum and that's what kept me motivated. I didn't know anyone in my country that liked speedsolving but I just didn't care about it, till a few months ago that I saw someone here in the forum with the same country, OMG I was so excited and I send him a pm, and we started talking, and then he told me that there were going to be an official competition in his city and told me about how fast the other people were. At the end I traveled there to the comp, and met many other people, was awesome.

So just tell your son to join this forum, because now, I'm not just addicted to the cube but also to speedsolving.com, I don't comment a lot but I'm always here xD.

 

[~Phoenix Death~]

Make it the "cool" thing.
Seriously though, show them a lot of fast (or just Felik's videos) solves.

 

[tx789]

I started when I was 11 and a half now I'm almost 14

 

[lizb]

It's really interesting to hear of all you guys who are/were the only ones in your school or city interested in speedcubing. Thanks for the replies. I think it's a good idea for him to join the forum and when he gets back from the week-long kayaking trip he's doing in France, I'll show him the site. He doesn't have a computer of his own yet, only uses the library one, so probably hadn't thought of joining a forum.

Thanks for the info about the Munich Open 2011, that's certainly a good possibility. It's not near to us, but not impossible to get to.

I've looked at the Tony Fisher site and that looks pretty amazing and inspiring.

 

[RaresB]

I think you just need the right group of kids. At my school 1 kid could do it in 2 min them all of us started learning. I was last to learn but I'm the best now. There are like 5 people sub 30 and 1 kid sub 20 and they all have been to comps.

 

[DaKrazedKyubizt]

I have 4 elementary students (2 into 5th grade, 1 going into 4th) and 1 middle school student (going into 7th grade) that I'm teaching how to solve the Rubik's Cube. The 7th grader and one of the 5th graders look like they could become very promising speedcubers! XD

I'm planning to bring them to local comps if they work hard enough.

 

[iWesleySnipes]

The main reason I continue cubing after having a sub-60 sec average is because everytime I find something interesting on YouTube I feel like I have to get good at it, as I did with Pencil Twirling, Zippo Tricks, Etc. So, maybe if you give them incentive to get learn it and get faster they would be interested. For example, if you offer a prize for the first person to solve it independently first, or go to local comps or evern start your own small local compition.

Also, like someone stated before, I am very interested in math and got into cubing quick, maybe there is a connection. Also, one thing I liked about learning how to solve it was learning how it actually works. If I could go back in time I would rather learn how to solve the puzzle by first learning HOW the cube works and thinking logically rather than simply memorizing algs.