When Laura Hart first began toying with the idea of project-based learning some 40 years ago, she knew she was ahead of the curve. But she wasn’t bothered. “I tend to be one of those quirky people in life whose focus isn’t necessarily on what’s going on around me,” she confesses with a chuckle. Still, she felt like she was onto something. And she was right. 

Today, Laura is the founder and president of Vision Education and Media, better known as Robofun®, a company that creatively employs technology and personalized, hands-on instruction to teach STEM and STEAM education to children from Pre-K to eighth grade. Since founding the company in 1998, she and her team have introduced over 20,000 children to the joys of learning, both on-site at the company’s Robofun® studio on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and in more than 300 schools across New York City. And they have no intention of slowing down. “I feel like the next five years are going to be transformational for project-based learning,” Laura enthuses.

What moves Laura the most is helping children from all backgrounds become engaged in their own learning process as creators rather than followers of rote instruction. She has worked in over 300 high-need, under-resourced schools in the five boroughs, bringing to underserved children what she was able to bring to children whose parents could afford a private school education. In the 27 years she’s run her company, she has received three National Science Foundation (NSF) grants. Her current NSF grant, with schools in Bed-Stuy and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, helps children and their teachers become more engaged with math through culturally relevant robotics activities. 

In a departure from standardized learning, project-based learning gets kids involved in their own educational process, an approach Laura strongly supports. “I believe deeply that we don’t put kids in charge of their own learning process nearly enough,” she observes, “and when we fail to do that, we miss the opportunity to develop our capital for the future, because children are our future.”

It is this belief that drove Laura to create Robofun®. Long years of teaching in the technology space, first for The Buckley School and then for the Little Red School House & Elisabeth Irwin High School, convinced her that with proper direction, children can learn to solve problems in ways that are both challenging and rewarding—something that Laura characterizes as ‘hard fun.’ And they keep coming back for more. 

A studio arts major with a master’s in education from Harvard and a fierce love for children, Laura recalls that she first considered the potential of melding the creative arts and technology during a college internship at the Capital Children’s Museum in Washington, DC. There she heard a lecture by the renowned MIT professor Seymour Papert on children, learning, and LOGO, a programming language Papert had created. “I then read his book Mindstorms, which argues for using the computer as a tool for powerful learning with the child’s interests in the driver’s seat, and I was intrigued,” she recalls. “Seymour’s writing helped to clarify my thoughts about how we learn, don’t learn, and how we might set up great learning environments for children.”

Dr. Papert became a friend, mentor, and business partner for Laura, helping her develop her ideas and refine her vision for what would ultimately become Robofun®. Today, Laura and her staff of 50 work to inspire students and teachers through online and in-person classes, after-school programs, and summer camps. The possibilities are endless, and brimming with promise.

“These days, everyone is experiencing anxiety about the role of AI in our society,” she observes. “To meet the challenges of learning in our fast-paced, rapidly changing world, kids need to be good at asking questions, strong communicators, and creative thinkers.” Happily, these are all qualities that apply to project-based learning, she observes. “Project-based learning harnesses children’s natural curiosity and allows them to solve problems in ways that acknowledge their individuality,” she explains. “Instead of the ‘drill and kill’ approach often seen in traditional teaching environments, project-based learning encourages kids to dig in and make something by thinking creatively and working collaboratively to find a solution. And they have fun while doing it.”

Laura understands the power of finding joy in learning, an experience she associates with her time at Emma Willard. “I attended a public high school in upstate New York and was bored out of my mind,” she recalls. “I graduated a year early, but my mother insisted I take a post-graduate year before entering college and enrolled me at Emma. It was the best educational experience I’ve ever had.” 

Laura quickly ticks off the names of her favorite teachers: English instructor Jack Pasanen, art teachers Lenny Beecher and Chris Leith, and government teacher Marcia Handelman. “Our teachers challenged us, but they were also accessible and wanted to help; the individual attention we received was incredible and made an enormous difference to me.”  

Her time at Emma also gave her a sense of agency and a desire to give back, Laura notes. “When I was in public school, I thought about the amount of effort I needed to just get through. But at Emma, I started thinking, ‘What do I have to do to better myself? How is this learning experience going to help me?’’ I gained a greater sense of personal responsibility, a bigger sense of the world, and a desire to give back. It was an amazing experience.”

This article was originally written by Lori Ferguson for the Fall 2025/Winter 2026 edition of Signature magazine.

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