My first class on Robotics was last Monday. This class is currently for 4th and 5th grade students and is using EZ-Robot products. The class is strictly voluntary and is taught after school. 50% of the students that are in the 4th and 5th grade have chosen to stay at school an extra hour to learn about robotics through this program. We have called the program SM@RT which stands for Science and Math through Robotic Technology. There are other programs currently running that other students had previously committed to participating in that are held at the same time. Some of these programs are over in December and I expect that participation percentage to be closer to 60% by that time. Here is what some of the parents had to say about the program after only the first day...
Stacie Smith Cobbs Sounds fun! Grace really wanted to take the class and she was so disappointed to find out it was during allegro. Which also is on Mondays.
School board member Stacy O'Toole Webb They are SO excited! Thank you from all Stacy O'Toole Webb And, now we are doing chores to earn a robot. Whatever it takes.
Parent Melissa French Luke F. loved it! Thank you for giving of your time and knowledge!
Headmaster who saw some of the first lesson Steve Lessman Incredible! Thank you for using your knowledge & insight to help students at SWCS.
Parent Rick Megan Still Ethan loved it, he wouldn't stop talking about it all the way home! Thank you!
Parent Christi Jones-Martin Great! Grayson will be joining you in January when Allegro ends!
Parent Mykl Spaeny You blew my boys away! They talked my leg off tonight. Jake has put a robot on his Christmas list. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thank you EZ-Robot for making it easy to teach a subject that is so complex. I cant wait until they make the robot move for the first time.
We covered a lot in the firs class including Analog data Digital data Default wire colors and what they represent Sonar sensors - how they work and what they are used for IR distance sensors - How they work and what they are used for Light sensors - How they work and what they are used for Cameras - When they work great and when you would want to use other sensors instead Microphones - when you would use them and why Servo motors - how they work and when you would want to use them Stepper motors - How they work and when you would want to use them Analog ports on the EZ-B V4 Digital ports on the EZ-B V4 Camera port on the EZ-B V4
They soaked the information in like a sponge. I quizzed them at the end of the class some and they did great. Tomorrow I am going to go meet these students for lunch. I look forward to it.
The next lesson is going to be on Electricity. That is a huge subject but we will cover Electrons, Protons, and neutrons Volts Amps How batteries work How electricity flows through their robots. How to limit this electricity for devices that require less voltage
I have some fun ways of teaching about electricity that help the kids remember principles of electricity that many people dont understand.
Feel free to follow the students progress at HTTP://cochranrobotics.com/SMART
I am always happy to read instead of watch video, so I think that would be great too. Let me know any time if you want proof-reading help.
Alan
The one thing that I find is that a common phrase out of the mouths of the teachers that I talk to at the school except for the principal is that the topics are too advanced for these students. I am in the class and can ask these students questions and they know the answers. The principal is monitoring the class and sees how these students are doing. I really think that if it is a topic that the student is interested in, they will focus and gather the information that they need if it is presented to them.
Robotics to me is something that grabs the attention of youth today like computers did to me 30+ years ago. I learned subject matter that was supposed to be for college students at that time. I was in the 4th grade writing my first programs and digging into computers to understand what made them work. My parents didn't discourage me from breaking things and not always getting them working again.
I see and understand that same desire to learn in the 25 students that are taking this class and it is very exciting to me. I don't expect the students to be able to write a paper on the topics that are discussed or to take a test over the topics that are discussed. I want them to be aware of things so that later we can talk about them in more detail.
This is where I differ from an educator. I don't have to assign homework or give tests. The students do that on their own. This is where fitting this into a school curriculum becomes difficult. Grades are not my concern. Teaching students about building robots is my goal.
It just doesn't fit nicely into the requirements that educators have placed on them in most schools. An after school program doesn't have these same requirements. Moving this into class at the elementary school level would be difficult. Doing this at the high school level would be much easier, but it would also grab the attention of far less students. Finding people to teach after school programs is far more difficult though. People have jobs and it is hard to find the time to teach an after school program.
I see this as a great business opportunity. There are some programs in California, New York and Texas that are teaching robotics in an after school "learning daycare" type business. Students are picked up from school and transported to these learning facilities where they get assistance with homework and work on cool projects like building robots. This takes education to the next level. The issue is that there are costs associated with this that are not cheep. Finding investors becomes a priority and then there are regulations on these learning centers/daycare/schools. I see this type of business growing drastically over the next 10 years though and think that EZ-Robot fits great in this environment.
Excellent read. Would love to be a fly on the wall in one of these classes.
Thanks Rich. The coolest part of the experience for me is when I see the light switch click on when a student understands the potential of what is being discussed, and then when they realize that these products allow them to achieve that potential. It's such a cool expression of understanding and excitement when that happens.
I slapped this together really quickly and will try to use it in the class tomorrow to record. I hope things go okay with this. I am going to wear a mic and hope to be able to get a decent recording. We will see how it goes. I will be wearing a bright green sweater for the camera to follow.
The next class will start going through the different parts of the ARC application. I plan to cover everything except for the specific controls this week. We will be going over the controls over the next 3 weeks and will be demonstrating how these are used. It will be interesting to see what questions are asked by the students when they see ARC.
Now that's a nice solution and demo at the same time. Great idea !
Robot-Doc,
I had thought about this but really had discounted it until thetechguru got me thinking about it again. He should get the credit for the idea really. Just like to give credit where credit is due.
Well, today was busy... We moved the class into a much larger room that has many people walking through it. It is called fellowship hall and serves as the lunch room and indoor recess room. We also introduced laptop/tablets in front of the students and put them into groups. All of this caused a lot of commotion and made it difficult for the students to stay focused. It seemed like after every sentence I was having to get everyone to pay attention again. All of this makes me concerned for what it is going to be like when we drop the robots in front of them.
We were able to cover about half of what I wanted to get covered in ARC, but the students have been introduced to it more than just having a screen in front of them. We discussed how frequent updates happen and how important it is to get the latest updates. We discussed EZ-Cloud and how you can store your projects on the cloud and then retrieve them to another computer. We also discussed how the public EZ-Cloud can help them and allow them to share their work with others, or see other peoples work to get ideas. We spoke about merging other people projects with their own and introduced the concept of leveraging off of what others are doing in the EZ-Robot community. We also discussed the My EZ-Robot section and how it will walk them through building their EZ-Robot. I demonstrated how they could save their design for their robot and publish it for others to use and showed them how you can document your robot. We looked at the ez-bit section and discussed how they can download and 3D print EZ-Bits if they had a 3D printer, or even design their own parts and share that with the community. Lastly we covered the servo Profile Section and how it is used to to tweak the servos so the 90 means 90 and not 91 or 89 on a servo.
They are starting to get impatient and want to have their hands on a robot building it. I keep telling them that they have to understand some basic things before we can just jump in and destroy some robots. It would be much better to build them and have them for next years class than just do things wrong and not have them for the rest of the year, much less for years to come. They are learning patience and this will help them in life, but it seems that everyone wants to get their hands on EZ-Robots. I have seen it on the message boards and am now seeing it in the class. I was hoping to be done with the "boring stuff" this week and be into what the controls do starting next monday, but it looks like we will have to spend one more week going through the non component parts of the ARC software.
The camera. Well, it went pretty well and I was able to capture video. I didn't save the voice recording that I was doing though. I shutdown without saving and then wanted to hit myself in the head. I do need to bring up another computer also, because I had to close the ARC that was recording to demonstrate opening a project and using the six instructions for building six. Yesterday I had a lot going on so I didn't think ahead enough to anticipate that. All in all it was a good class and the students learned a lot. They were placed in a new environment with new stuff and they couldn't quite focus as much as they needed to, but they were introduced to some important aspects of the tool they will used to build their robots. Mission accomplished.