This is one of the most interesting ideas I’ve seen thus far for integrating technology into education: robots! See the article available at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06222/712431-298.stm.
Apparently, LEGO, along with The Robotics Academy (part of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute) has created simple robots out of LEGOs, which students assemble themselves in class. The robots can be programmed to move and retrieve items, talk, measure rooms, and even take on a personality! They don’t cost much – a mere $200. I’m not sure how much these robots can actually teach the students (perhaps an interesting topic for me to pursue more next week) but the article gives the impression that they are more for motivating students. The biggest challenge I face as an educator is motivating students and showing them how math can be useful to them. This is something that not only accomplishes that but is interesting, as well! Telling a student, “Trigonometry is used heavily in engineering,” often falls on deaf ears. Showing them a robot, however, that they can program and put together and interact with, and telling them that none of it would be possible without mathematics, well that’s another story! I think technology is definitely useful as a means of increasing learning, but we must first make the student willing to participate. Without the participation, there is no learning. These robots will certainly get students hooked, making the educational processes that much easier.
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Wow, where to start. I'm actually the coach at our school for the First LEGO League (FLL) program. The program has been around since 1999, but this was our first year. Check out my blog (scroll down) for some postings and pictures and the official website for FLL:
http://vyuen.blogspot.com/
http://www.firstlegoleague.org
Basically, I took a group of selected high achievers from our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades to form a team that research that year's theme/topic (Nanotechnology this year) that correlates with the tasks that each team's robot must complete. The project involves researching, a lot of teamwork, and of course preparation and practice with the robot. It's really a huge international event, and I highly recommend it to any school interested in adding an extracurricular activity.
Robots are a great idea to get kids thinking about math. I know that it can be a tough subject to make exciting! I taught our high school alternative ed program in science and math. Math was always tough to get them excited about. I was fortunate to have a bunch of motor heads...and me being one lent itself to using timing chain gears, aspect ratios of tires, rear end gearing and engine bore/stroke coupled with overboring to get some interest going...lucky case I guess.
I'd imagine that robots would be much more more universal though.
I'll check out the links and learn more to pass on to our math department...maybe work something to match math and science to "explore" an alien world with robots to better understand the problems that come with operating vehicles from millions of miles away...interesting stuff!
Thanks :)
Before I left the classroom altogether, I taught DCT, a kind of work readiness class. One component was selecting careers and many of my students were not college-bound. Instead, most were looking toward a trade or a manufacturing job. The latter, they found out, was a rapidly decreasing job market (unless you were into repair or design) because the human element was being replaced by machines. Specifically robots in many cases!
One illustration I used was that during my senior year in high school ('78), we took a trip to the GM plant in Doraville, GA (now defunct). What we saw was an assembly line with hundreds of workers putting the cars together. Fast forward to today and the assembly lines have only a very few humans involved in the process (most of them maintenance or quality control personnel). The bulk of the manufacturing process is done by...robotics!
I really wish we had a technology class or program similar that is available so that students interested in this line of work could see what would be involved. I think what you (and Victor) have described is awesome. Unfortunately, it has seemingly helped ring the last bell for blue collar interests in many US manufacturing interests. But, it can be viewed as further proof of the value from top to bottom associated with education.
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